


Coriolis Effect

by hellkitty



Category: Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-09
Updated: 2012-07-08
Packaged: 2017-11-07 09:05:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 22,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/429291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Casestory: There's a serial killer on the loose in Rodion. Can newcomers Springarm and Wheelarch solve the case in time?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AHAHAHA I haven't written a mystery in ages. I am pretty sure you'll be able to figure out who the killer is as soon as all the suspects are

Springarm felt his spark seem to gutter as he hit his comm. //Another one.// What was this? Fourth? Fifth?  Too many. 

Springarm nodded, tearing his optics from the body, studying the dented walls.  The gutters, where no mech willingly went.  It smelled of rancid oil, sparkchar and death.  They’d been in Rodion barely a decacycle, and already he knew more than enough about this place. “They seem to be getting worse.”

Wheelarch stepped up, red and gold gleaming in the harsh crime scene lights, nodding back.  “They’re going to find it hard to write this one off as a Syk deal gone wrong.” A little cold, Springarm thought, but he couldn’t disagree.  Maybe this time they’d listen. Maybe this time they’d do something.

Orion Pax’s voice cut over the comm, ragged, thin, even through the boosted comm of Security relays. //You sure it’s the same?//

//Looks it.// The body lay sprawled before him, spark chamber ripped open, tire shredded to something like a rubber fringe. Just like the others. //Only, this one isn’t a Dead Ender.//  Anyone could tell—a half-dozen obvious signs: all the trim intact, paint matching and bright, signs of recent upmods. Unstripped upmods, which meant this, like the others, wasn’t a mod-strip killing.

A soft sound, like a muffled curse. Orion didn’t let himself curse, or tried not to. He thought it gave a bad example to his mechs. It had struck Springarm at the start, when they’d gotten their transfer interview: he remembered thinking that this was a captain who wanted to live the law, to be a good example to his team.

“On the plus side,” Wheelarch said, “We can maybe get a solid ID on this one.”

Springarm shot him a look. “Some plus.”

Wheelarch gave a shrug, the gesture seeming magnified in the high key cast-shadows. “If it helps us solve this…?” He cocked his head. “We could do some good.”

Springarm nodded, his posture softening. Wheelarch was right.  And as newcomers to Rodion…this would be such a good start. Maybe then they could finally feel that they could move on, leave the stain of Nyon behind them. “Still, I don’t look forward to the notification.”  The worst part—telling coworkers, friends, lovers, that they’d lost someone. He’d never had to do it here in Rodion.  Maybe it would be better, telling strangers.  Somehow he doubted it. Loss was loss, one of the things that held all mechs together, unified their experience. Rich or poor, nameless or famous, they suffered loss, they mourned.

“I’ll come with you,” Wheelarch said, bumping the back of his hand against Springarm’s. This, too, he thought, unified mechs. The good side of that coin.  A nod between them, before both their gazes returned to the spectacle before them.

Wheelarch stepped forward, kneeling beside the body, blocking, for a moment, Springarm’s view.  Which was a relief, to see the solid, living frame of his twin instead of the gutted ruin.  “Tire was done pre-mortem,” Wheelarch said, quietly. 

It was horrific.  Springarm couldn’t get over the pain the mech must have been in. And the victim was—as had the others been—a biwheel frame. Like himself, like his twin. It felt…personal.  He could swear his  drivetrain tire twitched in sympathy every time his gaze fell on the shredded ruin. 

He shook it off. Unprofessional. There was a crime to be solved, and standing around feeling traumatized wouldn’t get that done.  There was time for him to react, but not while he was on the clock. 

“You know what to do,” Orion said, his voice once again composed. “I think it’s time we take this to the media.”  He closed the comm channel. 

“About time,” Wheelarch said, straightening, turning to his partner, his twin. The crime scene lights cast his shadow threefold behind him, like grey wings.

[***]

Springarm’s shoulders sagged as the door to the apartment he shared with Wheelarch closed behind him, shutting out the world.  “Tomorrow,” he said, vaguely. “We’ll do the notification tomorrow.” They’d gotten a name, Arcweld, from the serial number registry, and an address.  Tomorrow.

“He’s not going to get any more dead,” Wheelarch said, coding the door locked.  He gave a laugh. “Silly, that I think a flimsy security lock would actually do something to keep us safe.” He bumped Springarm’s shoulder, companionably. “You and I know better than that.”

Springarm tried, but couldn’t summon a matching smile.  “If you think of it, none of us are safe.” 

Wheelarch studied him for a moment, then squeezed the shoulder, before heading to their small fuel dispenser.  “You don’t have anything to worry about,” he said. “I’ll keep you safe.” He handed Springarm a fresh glass of energon, an almost gallant grin on his face.

“Not a time for jokes,” Springarm said. 

The smile faded, to a hurt look that Springarm immediately regretted. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Springarm shook his head. “No, Wheelarch. I’m sorry. This case. This whole thing. It’s just…,” he gave a helpless shrug.

“…a lot to deal with.”  Wheelarch nodded, and Springarm felt his spark seem to loosen, some of the tension draining away. Wheelarch understood him. They were a good team because of it, and the best of friends. Springarm remembered their discussion, their decision to transfer here, to the city. No argument, just entire, unmitigated support.

“Yes.  I guess I’m just used to the other crimes we get.  Drug murders, robberies, modstrips, assaults.” Ugly enough, as he listed them, but almost desirably normal in the face of an unmistakable chain of connected deaths. “This is…beyond me.”

A return of the gallant smile. “Nothing’s beyond you,” Wheelarch said, lifting his own glass as a hint. “I have faith.” 

Springarm looked down at his energon in his hand.  “Let’s hope it’s not misplaced,” he said, but obediently lifted his to his mouth.  He sighed, taking a sip, letting the fuel’s richness tingle over his intakes, down his lines, almost washing away some of the tension. “Thank you,” he said, optics grateful. “You always know what I need.” 

“I try,”  Wheelarch glowed, one hand cupping under Springarm’s elbow. “Come on, we should recharge.  You have your intake profile tomorrow.”

Springarm nodded, downing the rest of his energon in a quick gulp.  Not something he was looking forward to, though he’d heard nothing bad at all about Rung. Probably just afraid of facing it, himself. Nyon had been...well, it had ended badly. It still burned his faceplates to think about it. “Door locked?”  As soon as he said it, he remembered Wheelarch locking it. He gave a nervous laugh. “Sorry. I remember.”

Wheelarch shrugged, reaching to take the empty glass. “You’re rattled. I don’t blame you.” He turned to place them in the small autocycler. “Precautions are only sensible, right?”   He turned back, shepherding Springarm in front of him, down the short corridor that led to their recharge berths.

Wheelarch pulled his twin into a hug, fierce, abrupt, outside the doorway. “You’re safe,” he whispered. 

Springarm softened in the hard embrace, his own arms clutching at the flame-colored frame.  “Thank you,” he said. “I know.”

“I could recharge with you,” Wheelarch offered, rubbing his cheek against Springarm’s. 

“No,” Springarm mustered a laugh.  “I’m not that rattled.” They hadn’t recharged together since before their final upframe. Did he really seem that bad off? He squeezed Wheelarch’s frame, fingers tweaking the shoulder tire playfully. “Thank you for the offer, though.” But really, he couldn’t possibly do that to Wheelarch—have the mech, his own twin, curl on the floor beside his recharge berth, because he was afraid?  He felt a little mortified by his own fear.  Was he that bad?  No, he’d have to do better. 

“If you’re sure,” Wheelarch said, quietly, reluctant to release the embrace.

“I am,” Springarm said, trying to cover his embarrassment with a laugh.  He gave another sharp squeeze before releasing his own hug, stepping back. The arms fell from him, slowly, like the weight of memory.


	2. Chapter 2

 

“What?” Springarm bolted upright, his tire juddering against the seat. Morning muster was normally lively, but this was more than he could take.

Orion made a quiet sound, half-disapproving of the outburst, yet still, somehow, sympathetic. “I am as distressed about it as you are, Springarm.”

It seemed ridiculous, impossible. Captain Orion Pax shouldn’t be ‘distressed’. He was the head of the police. Surely that authority counted for something?

“I don’t think so,” Wheelarch said, pushing off the wall behind him. “I’m not really sure you can measure that.” 

Springarm shot him a pleading look, over his shoulder.  The Captain was not attacking him.  Then again, that’s what Springarm got for acting so…weak last night. No wonder Wheelarch was being defensive.  “But, sir,” he said, quickly, “it’s not about me. Or you. It’s public safety.  There’s a killer out there. Mechs have a right to know.” 

A tilted blue helm. “I understand, Springarm.  However, we have a responsibility not to create panic.” This was a change from last night. A big one.  The two biwheels exchanged glances: something had happened. Someone had pulled the Captain aside and said something to him. Something enough to make him cancel the press conference. 

“Create panic? Sir, with all due respect, citizens have a right to know.”  Arcweld’s body, sprawled on the pavement, seemed to float before his optic shutters, flickering into existence every time he blinked.

Wheelarch chimed in. “What would it take, then? Another dead mech? Two more? Five more?  You want it out there that we knew? That we knew and didn’t say anything?”

Orion turned his head, the gesture Springarm had learned was his version of a frown.  But the thinking one, the one that was struggling, rather than condemning. 

“He’s right,” Springarm said.  “If we want mechs to trust us, we have to earn it.”  He forced himself calm, catching Wheelarch’s gaze.  The orange mech nodded, subsiding.  They’d said their piece, and Orion had allowed their opinions. That was enough. They were new enough to Rodion: they knew their old post and how they’d had to fight prejudices of corruption, fight to win trust, but this was different, strange ground. And they both knew they were under a cloud. They could only push so far. And Springarm realized that his words were meant just as much for himself as his Captain.

“AND,” Whirl said, from where he stood, as usual, near the doorway, his visor, as usual, looking everywhere, missing nothing, “What’s been done to dragnet the area? Any likely leads?”  He gave a cocky shrug, ignoring Springarm’s stung look. “Hey, PR aside, we’ve got a fraggin’ crime to solve, right?” 

Orion gave a cautious nod. Whirl was a good officer, Springarm thought. He’d certainly won the unofficial department awards for arrests more than anyone else—he’d proudly shown the two the wall himself.  And maybe this was the kind of enthusiasm they needed—getting ground under their tires instead of spinning wheels against whatever mysterious forces were pulling the Captain’s strings. “We’ve got a few possible leads. Maybe witnesses, maybe not. They can at least establish a negative timeline.” He turned to Springarm. “You’re on that.”

He turned to Wheelarch. “Street patrol. See if you can shake some more info. Whirl can show you the usual routes.”  Whirl gave a pleased growl, optic nodding.

“Who will do the notification?”  Springarm blurted. He’d spent the entire night bracing himself. It felt…stupid to be disappointed, but here he was. Maybe it had been wrong to leave. Maybe they couldn’t handle it here. He felt soft and kind and weak compared to Whirl.

“I can,” Wheelarch said. “Lateshift. Or we can go together.” A slide of the optics. He understood. Always.

Orion understood something in the looks. “All right. I’ll leave it to you.” He tapped his datapad. “Well, that’s all.”  He rocked on his feet for a moment, as if debating saying something more, the moment long and awkward.  “Springarm. You have your interview in fifteen.”

“Yes, sir.” He couldn’t tell if that was a friendly reminder or a hint: you don’t really fit in here, yet.

A sharp nod. “Dismissed.”

The rustle and noise of mechs getting up, servos firing on, jockeying for the door. Wheelarch stepped closer. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean to get so aggressive. Just, like you…a bit on edge.” A flash of a smile under the worried brow.

“Don’t apologize, Wheelarch. I’m glad you spoke up.”  He was.  He was inexpressibly glad that he always had someone on his side. 

Wheelarch teetered forward, almost as if contemplating touching him again, before the smile quirked and he turned away. “Hey. Catch you a cycle before shift end for the notif, all right?”

Springarm nodded, feeling a sudden rise of tension in his chassis. The notification was going to be hard, but first, he had the profile to get through.  The tension showed on his face: he could read it in Wheelarch’s comforting smile.

“Hang in there, Springarm.  Have faith in yourself. Like I do.”  A quick squeeze to his arm, before Wheelarch turned away and he felt the pressure on his arm like a lingering comfort.

[***]

“Have a seat.” Rung gestured him into a deep, plush chair.  It looked like a test.

No, Springarm, you’re just being paranoid. Which is not a great thing to be in front of the unit’s psych specialist. He forced himself to settle into the seat, spreading a smile over his face. It felt false and thin, but it was something. He cycled a vent. Think of the Matrix, he told himself.  Think of the Matrix flame, steady and clear. 

“Nervous?”

“No.”  A lie, and he knew Rung saw through it.  “It’s just...new.”

“And there was some...unpleasantness over your departure from Nyon, yes?” 

He could feel the other’s optics on him, piercing, probing.  And he could feel himself rising, defensive. “It was all rumors.”

“Rumors can be insidious.”  Rung smiled. “We don’t care about them here, except how they may affect your functionality.”

“I can function fine.”  Defensive, still.  Springarm forced his palms flat against his thighs.  “I just...they bother me. That anyone would think that. Of us.”

Rung nodded. “It can be difficult. Mechs often speculate the worst about things they don’t understand.”

“We...we can’t be the first twins out there.”  And that, he realized, was what bothered him.  They had to have known twins before.  But only stapled those horrible, vile rumors to he and Wheelarch.

“You think you did something to encourage that.”

“I don’t!” Hot, outraged and...cut to the quick. How many times had he asked himself that question, questioned, second-guessed every glance, every smile he aimed at his spark twins? “We’re close. We’ve always been close.  Good friends.” He felt a flare of anger, long suppressed. How dare they?  How dare they try to twist a friendship into something obscene? Paint it with their salacious imaginations?

“You went to the Academy together.” 

“Yes.”  Defensive, still. He could feel his EM prickling, even as he tried to force it under control. 

“Did you room together?” Rung tilted his head back, obviously observing Springarm’s response.

“No.”  Springarm felt his mouth work. “Because we were afraid of just that kind of stupid rumor.” 

Rung nodded. “So you were aware of the possibility.”

“We were young.  You worry about stupid things when you’re young.”

“And not later?”

Springarm shook his head. He’d learned, or thought he’d learned, later, that it didn’t matter. 

Rung nodded, and tapped something into his datapad.  “I’m going to ask you a personal question.  It is a standard question, on the intake form, all right?” The blue optics flicked up. “I just want you to know that it’s perfectly normal.”

Springarm shifted in his seat. “What?”

“Your sexual status? Are you a virgin?”

“Of course not.” He forced himself to remember what Rung had said. Standard question, that’s all. See, Springarm? You’re jumping at shadows, seeing threat where there is none intended.  “I lost my virginity at the Academy.” He couldn’t prevent the slightly wry smile. “ _Not_ with Wheelarch.”  That was all he wanted to say about that.  Those records were sealed. 

“I wouldn’t think so,” Rung said. “And now?”

Springarm shook his head. “We just got here. Frankly, I have other things on my mind right now than looking for that.”

“And in Nyon?”

“Same thing. We were new, trying to settle in, do some good. We were strangers there, our first posting.”

Rung nodded.  “And the others turned that into something...else.”

“Yes.”  He subsided into the seat again. 

“I can see why you’d be defensive. Yet you are rooming together here.”

“We refuse to let rumors and lies hurt us again.  We said that if we were just friends, not twins, we’d room together.  Doing anything else would look like an admission of something.”

Rung nodded. “If you’re doing nothing wrong, that’s often the best way.”  He smiled. “You’ll be happy to know we’re not so parochial here.”  A laugh. “And we have better things to do, or worse, than gossip about our officers.”

Springarm studied his hands. “I know.  I know. Just...we’ve worked so hard to get anywhere and we have to come here, and start all over again when we did nothing wrong.”

Another nod and another tap at the datapad. “Again. Another routine question: Why did you want to become a policemech?”

Springarm relaxed, feeling the tension melt from his frame. “To help.”

“Help. That’s an unusual answer.”

“Is it?  I mean,” he shrugged, trying hard not to think of Valve. Some secrets needed to stay secret. The records were sealed. They’d all made sure.  “Sure, they do bad things.  And part of it’s keeping that off the streets. But most of them need help, sympathy.” He thought of the bodies in the Dead End.  They needed sympathy, but what he could give was too little, too late. He spread his hands, again. “I guess I just want to make a difference.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Shall we begin?”  Springarm settled himself across the table, datapad in hand trying not to think of Rung and his datapad.  Across from him, a dark-armored mech, a groundframe, the white helm smudged with grime.

Of course. Not a lot of airframes in the gutters. They’d go mad. 

“Sooner we start, sooner we get this over with,” the mech retorted, folding his arms over his chassis. Springarm took in the posture, the pinched expression, the flat hostility of the optics. 

He pushed up again, crossing to a small dispenser, and drawing two rations. An obvious tactic, perhaps, but he meant it as simple civility: too many mechs went hungry in the gutters.  He placed the cube in front of the other mech. “They probably brought you over here before refueling,” he said blandly, before dropping back down onto his own chair.

“Not hungry,” the mech said, but his bound hands came up, as if testing his own resolve, to rest near the cube.  Acknowledging, flatly, calling the bribe a bribe.

“Just in case,” Springarm said, taking a sip of his.  This kind—perpetually on edge. It was hard to put them at ease. But he’d been doing this for a while now, and there was a reason Captain Orion Pax put him in this duty.  This, he could do. PR, maybe not.  He looked down at his pad. “Drift, yes?”

A sullen glare.

Springarm smiled. “Drift. I’m Springarm.”

“What are the charges.”  The optics flicked to the cube, then back up, the voice blunt. 

“You haven’t been charged with anything.” He skimmed the datapad for the hold-order. Drift had just been within a few block radius of last night’s killing.  And, the order read, had energon stains on his legs. Suspicious? Perhaps. 

“Then why these.” He held up his wrist bindings, challenging.

He had a point. Springarm reached over, taking the wrists in his hand. He felt the shock, the resistance from the other mech: lots of gutter dwellers didn’t like being touched. This one looked like he’d fought his arrest, long scores and scratches over his wrist armor. Maybe this arrest, maybe previous. He had a long enough charge sheet, with the usual Dead End petty crimes.  Springarm coded the restraints, and the clattered to the table.

Drift snatched his hands back, rubbing at his wrists. “Not going to say thank you.”  Telling refusal , there.  But it wasn’t the time to investigate that. Springarm hated having to prioritize, but dead mechs were surely worse than bruised egos.

Springarm grinned. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”  He sat back. “We just want to ask you some questions.”

“That’s what they all say.” The mouth twisted in disgust. And after a moment, Drift snatched at the cube, gulping a sip as if to wash some vile taste from his mouth. 

“They.” Unavoidable now. 

“You know. Your kind.  ‘A few questions’.  Then…,” he cut himself short, abruptly, optics boring holes in Springarm’s face. “You know.”

“I…don’t.”

A sneer, hard, like a shield jammed in his face. “We’ll see.”

It was a shame, Springarm thought,idly. Without the sneer, Drift was quite striking, and he obviously wasn’t dumb. What could he have been if he’d been given a chance? 

Oh.  The shock and recognition must have shown on his face: something twitched in the other’s cheek, the sneer turning almost fearful. 

“You know,” Drift repeated, but the edge was gone.

“I’m…that’s not what this is about.” Springarm shifted in his seat, fingers clumsy on the datapad. “I’m…I’m sorry.” Apologizing for another’s crime, another’s abuse. He didn’t want to query the holding duty officer. He hated to even think of the stories, much less believe them:  forced sexual favors, shady deals. “Did it? Last night?”

The mouth flattened, optics closing to a serpent’s.  “Like I’d tell you.”  Which meant yes.

 Springarm’s optics shuttered, his fingers drifting to the Matrix sigil he had on his helm.  “I’m…I’m sorry.”

A dismissive shrug. “Can we get to whatever this is supposed to be about?”

And Springarm had been doing this long enough to know that that was a cut off. End of conversation. He nodded.  “There was a murder last night.”

“Isn’t there always.” Flat, unsympathetic.

“You were in the sweep area.”

Drift twitched, optics dropping as if looking at the energon stains on his legs through the solid mass of the table. He took another drink, hasty. Nervous. “Wasn’t me.”

“Would you tell me if it was?” A bit of a gibe.

“Look.” Challenge in the red night-sight optics. All guttermechs had them, one way or the other. They were necessary to survive down there.  Springarm felt the disadvantage every time he went there himself, with his daysight blue.  “Not going to tell you I’m innocent. But,” Drift shook his head. “Done a lot wrong, but I’ve never killed.  Even when I should have.” Again, the stare held his, demanding to be heard. 

Springarm nodded. “I believe you,” he said, quietly.  He’d heard enough lies over the years, protestations of false innocence.  This wasn’t one of them. 

A long silence.  “I don’t kill,” Drift repeated, flatly.

“I heard you.” 

“Then what’s this about?”

“The murder.  There have been a string of them. Connected.”  Springarm teetered, realizing he was on the verge of saying too much. Too much, according to Orion Pax, or whoever had given that directive not to go public with the cases.  Consider this, he thought, my minor mutiny. 

“Syk deals.” A shrug.  “That stuff is bad news.”

Springarm shook his head. “Not this time.  Trust me.” He used the phrase by reflex. Right. Drift trust him.  It didn’t look like the guttermech trusted anyone. 

“Don’t know anything.”  Ambiguous, or ambivalent.  Springarm was used to it. Nobody in the gutters ‘knew’ anything, if you were Security Forces. Not even their own names, if they thought it would jam the gears of justice.

Springarm laughed. “Neither do we, at this point.  But we’re trying. And we need help.”  This approach could so easily backfire, he thought. It sounded borderline smarmy, even to him, and he didn’t have Drift’s history.

“I don’t know anything,” Drift repeated.

“You know something,” Springarm said. He called up a map of the lower zones.  “Here,” he said, pushing it between them, rising up to kneel on the chair so they could both look at the screen. Drift stared at him for a long moment before bending his head to the datapad as well. 

Springarm pointed. “The body was found here.”  He gave the time they got the call.  “We need to try to reconstruct what happened before.”

A long stare at the map. “Nothing,” Drift said. “Just the usual.”  One battered finger traced down from the map. “I was…round here. Didn’t hear anything.” A bit of a hitch.

“You were…?”

“…settling a dispute.” The hand tightened to a fist, in memory, in challenge.

Springarm knew when not to push. “Would you have heard anything?”

The mouth flattened. “Possibly not. Unless it was loud.  We heard sirens.” A shrug. “Must have been you.”

Springarm nodded.  “Nothing before that, that stands out.”

A shake of the head, before turning to study the map again. Drift gave a soft snort. “Not used to seeing it. Like this, you know.” 

“A map?”

A sharp look, scouring for traces of mockery. “Yes.” 

“Is it accurate?” He knew it wasn’t, knew it was the best they had.  There was always talk of updating, sending cartographers down there but somehow it never happened. 

Somehow.  Like any survey team would willingly head to the gutters.

“…no.”  The finger traced a line. “That culvert there has been blocked.  New access.  Here.”

“Access.” That…shouldn’t happen.

“Pry off panels, make a path through the cables and pipes.  Tight fit but…it’s been done.” Keeping the structure passive. ‘it’ has been done.  No doubt Drift had done it once or twice himself.

“Someone could hide in one of these accesses.” 

A nod. “We do.” 

“It would be almost impossible to catch someone in there.”

“If he knew his way around.” Another admission, while admitting nothing.

“And you do.” Just a hint of pressure. 

The optics found his, red slits. “Wouldn’t have survived this long if I didn’t.”

Precisely.  Springarm straightened.  “We could use your help. With the map, at least. And to keep your audio open for anything.”

“Why should I help you?”

Oh, but Springarm knew the answer to this one by now. He’d figured Drift out. “Because someone is killing guttermechs. Someone should care.”

The words struck home, some place deep under the hard armor Drift showed. His mouth worked. Finally, “The map.” 

“I could give you a pad with this map on it.”

“You’d…give me something.”  Right.  Looking for the catch. Nothing was free in Drift’s world.

“I’d get a better map out of it,” Springarm said, calmly.

“IF I brought it back.”

Springarm sat back against the chair. “You would.  You have honor, Drift.”

A curse, the entire frame going tense. Even so, the fingers clutched at the datapad, wanting it, the grip of a mech who had never had anything to call his own. Not even, at times, his own frame. Springarm’s spark ached.

He stood up, moving toward the door. “Let me get you that pad, Drift.”

“…all right.”  Quiet pride warring with gratitude and want.  A surrender, Springarm felt, but one that was worth far more than bringing a syk dealer to justice.  He’d joined the Security Forces to help, and this…this was an absolute good.


	4. Chapter 4

Every mech had friends. Lovers. Intimates.  Even in the gutters, even in the Dead End, everyone had someone who missed them when they died.

Sometimes, even enemies.

They rolled up to the address on Arcweld’s current registry, Springarm still riding on a tide of confidence, recalling the strange, hard gratitude in Drift’s face as he’d handed over the datapad he’d DX’d from Supply.  The optics shone, the hands curling almost lovingly over the battered metal of the pad’s edges and Springarm had thought that this is what a mech looks like who’s never had anything he wanted before.

It felt significant. It buoyed him, even to this address, and Wheelarch’s presence, beside him, helped as well. 

He rolled to a near stop, rising smoothly to his feet, hearing Wheelarch do the same to his right.  He thought back to his profile interview with Rung, and straightened, defiant.  People here weren’t so close-minded. He had faith. This was a fresh start and he would be proud of Wheelarch if he wanted to.

“Ready?” He was asking more for himself than Wheelarch.  Wheelarch nodded, heading into the building.

Arcweld’s quarters were low-end, of course, stuff that made even the few humble rooms Springarm and Wheelarch shared look upscale.  And those quarters were shared, the rent fractioned, by two other tenants—a green and gold, three-wheel grounder named Flywheel and a red and black small rotary Swashplate. 

Springarm could feel the optics on him, curious, studying, taking in the Security Forces blazons. 

“Arcweld,” one of them—Flywheel—began. 

Springarm nodded.

“Frag,” Swashplate said, clenching his hands. “Knew this would happen.”

He did? Wheelarch and Springarm exchanged glances.

“How much?”

Wheelarch blinked. “How much?”

“The bail. How much is it gonna cost to spring him?”

Another glance, their faces falling.  “There’s…no bail,” Wheelarch said. “He’s been offlined.”

Flywheel bolted upright from where he’d perched on a chair. “Offline.” He sounded shocked, numb.

Springarm cycled a vent, feeling the warm air eddy in the suddenly still room. “Yes.” 

Swashplate swore again.  “Knew it. Knew it was going to happen. I told him. Told you, a million times.” The rotary’s rant was cut short by a sharp look from the trike. He sank back against the wall with another oath. 

The two cyclebots exchanged glances.  “You knew.”

Flywheel’s turn to frown. “Arcweld…he lived dangerously.”

“Dangerously,” Wheelarch said, tapping a datapad. “Like, down in the Dead End.”

A hesitation, then a nod.

“Any reason he was down there? It’s a dangerous area.” So dangerous that Security Forces didn’t venture down there alone.  Springarm thought, briefly, of Drift, who had managed to carve something like a life.

A snort that might have been amused, in other circumstances. “He was an artist.”

“Thought he was. Wanted to be,” Swashplate cut in.  “Both of you, not happy with what you’ve got. Always want more.” 

Flywheel gave an amused shrug, the kind one gave at an old, familiar, and heatless argument. “He was talented, Swashplate. Even you admit that much.”

A grumble.  And then a frown that tried too hard to mask obvious hurt. “Yeah. And look where it got him.”

“Artist. And the Dead End.”  Wheelarch’s doubt was palpable, and Springarm agreed. Nothing beautiful down there.

“He did,” Flywheel said. “He could find beauty anywhere.” 

Springarm thought again of Drift, who might have been beautiful. In another place. In another world. He nodded. He swung back to the questions. “Did he have any enemies?”

“Enemies?” Flywheel tipped his head. “That’s…a bit strong, don’t you think?”

“Is it?”

The blue optics blinked. “Yeah.  I mean, everyone’s got mechs who don’t like them. You know, coworkers who annoy you, that mech you cut off in traffic.” He shrugged. “Not exactly ‘mortal enemy’ territory.”

“We’ll…start with enemies,” Wheelarch said.

The two considered, shaking their heads. “He was pretty hard not to like.”

Springarm gave a bland nod. Friends always said that. Especially after a murder. Who would, after all, speak badly of the dead?  Wheelarch began the rest of the questions: confirming employment, a few basic, non-leading character questions and the like, and ending with, “Any questions?  Did he have any preferences for disposition of his frame?”

Flywheel shuddered, ventilation a tight, nervous hiss, before he waved off Swashplate’s hand. “No. It’s just…he’s never coming home.” A faint, sickly smile. “Guess it’s just hitting me now.”  The rotary’s hand planted on his shoulder, anyway, giving a squeeze. 

Springarm gave a signal with his hand. It was time to leave.  Grief was always too private, he thought. It shouldn’t be witnessed by strangers.  He and Wheelarch rose, as he pulled a flimsy from his storage. “If you can think of anything else.”

The flimsy crinkled in Flywheel’s fingers. 

“Anything,” Wheelarch affirmed.

Springarm nodded. “No matter how insignificant you think it is.”  He managed a taut smile fervent with sincerity. “We really want to solve this.”  He held the gold gaze of the trike until Flywheel nodded. And Springarm thought about if it was ever any comfort to those who had lost.

[***]

It always felt wrong, Springarm thought, how things faded. The first day, it seemed monstrous, as though the world should end.

The world didn’t end; it plodded on, cycle after cycle, event after event. You got hungry. You got tired.  You fueled, you recharged. Time passed, and did its work, dulling against the present.  The horror of the corpse faded, mutilation seemed to blur along the edges, worn down by the dull routine of petty crime: moving violations, assaults, low-level busts.

He thought of Drift, sometimes, down in the gutters below Dead End. Had he sold the datapad? Did he cling to it as a possession? Would he die for it? Springarm had seen it before: mechs in the gutters clinging to a tattered possession, a  piece of junk most mechs might discard, rating it a higher than their lives.  He’d always wondered what the object must have meant, that they clung so fiercely, trading their spark rather than lose it.

He wondered if there was anything he’d die for,  or if he was better for thinking his life worth more than a gift, the ability to own something, no matter how small.

And he thought of Valve.  It felt like a crime, here, in the Police Station, to think of their triplet. It felt like a castigation, to succeed while he languished in prison, but it felt like they owed him, too. He had stepped back, into the shadows, letting their connection be scrubbed, so he wouldn’t hold them back. What was that, to rate someone else more highly than yourself?

The world seemed full of things of shifting value.

Springarm remembered the tear-filled conversation, the three of them  sitting around the cheap plastic table of the prison, Wheelarch staring at the ground, Valve clutching at their hands, as though trying to memorize the touches.

Wheelarch was a mainstay, as always.  Stable and strong, almost unaffected by the grisly murder.  Springarm envied his twin’s strength. And he knew Wheelarch admired him, as well—the glue that bound them almost as strongly as their secrets. Wheelarch had sustained the three of them through the trial, through the proceedings to sever, legally, their connection.  Wheelarch had held Springarm by the shoulder when he wobbled, hearing Valve’s registry number changed.  So no one would know. 

It felt like betrayal, suddenly, the other side of sacrifice—taking what was offered.  It felt dirty.

“Springarm.” 

Wheelarch’s voice held a low note of surprised tension. Springarm looked up from where he had bent over a series of reports, a backlog of paperwork from the previous night. He had been scouring idly for names. 

Wheelarch tipped his head toward the monitor in the ready room: Captain Orion Pax’s face, serious, calm, filled the screen.

They stood up in unison, crossing into the ready room, joining a mass of other assembling Security Forces mechs.

Springarm shook his head. He hadn’t seen Orion Pax since morning muster, and hadn’t exchange a word with him beyond mere pleasantries since the day after Arcweld’s murder, aware he’d overstepped, and trying to retreat into obedience, cringing every time he thought of the report Rung had to be writing, sending to Captain Orion Pax’s file locker.

They turned to the screen: Orion Pax stood in the rarely-used briefing room, the seal of the Polity of Rodion, brass-polished and gleaming, behind him. 

“…yes,” Orion Pax was saying.  “As I said, our intent is not to cause panic, but to inform the citizens of both the danger and our progress.”

“Progress.” A voice, off lens.

“We are doing what we can,” Orion Pax said, his voice cool, unflappable. One of his greater traits, Springarm thought. Nothing rattled Orion Pax. No, he’d never entertain rumors and gossip. This was a better place. A safer place.

“So you’re admitting you’re out of your depth here.”

“Admitting?”  A tilt of the blue helm. “As I said, we are informing the public, who have a right to know.”

A bustle of sound, then another voice. “The public.  I guess the Dead End doesn’t count. Let them get slaughtered by this chain killer.”

Chain killer?  A glance darted around the ready room. 

“No,” Orion Pax said. “That’s not what we said. Though the Dead End is dangerous, undeniably. We’re telling everyone—everyone—not to take chances. Not to be alone.”

Another buzz, comments lining up, but Orion Pax cut them off with a hand gesture. “If you don’t mind, we would like to get back to work solving this crime. Thank you for your time.” His voice, as always, chalk-calm and serious.  With a nod, he simply turned from the podium, heading toward the door.

“Wow,” Whirl whistled. “What the frag was that all about?”

“Maybe going public was a mistake,” Wheelarch said, shaking his head. “Can’t they understand we’re trying?”

“Not sure how that could have gone worse. Whatever we’re doing, it’s not enough,” Fireflash muttered. “Even if it’s tracking down every lead we have.”

“It would have been worse,” Springarm said, “if we’d waited.”

 “You think?” Whirl shrugged. “Maybe the whole problem would have, you know, disappeared.”

“I don’t think this one’s going away,” Springarm said. “Five similar murders.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it, but it just doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that just…stops.”

“Escalating.”

Springarm turned to Wheelarch.”You think?”

A nod of the red helm. “The violence of the tire mutilation. It’s gotten worse.”  A pause. And then a quiet admission, almost guilty. “…I studied the pictures.”

Whirl tipped his head. “You think it’ll get worse? Maybe the killer’s topped out. Maybe he’s found his thing, or whatever.”

“His…thing.”

Whirl shrugged. “Some mechs get off on it. Kind of like Syk. It’s a fix.” His tone tried to create a distance, and Springarm thought suddenly of Drift’s tense responses, the hint that something had happened during his arrest.

It was a distressing thought and unfair to think about Whirl. He shoved it aside.

“He’s right,” Wheelarch said. “Makes sense. I mean, even the arenas, that sort of thing.” His mouth twitched, staring at the now empty feed of the briefing room. “It’s like a worship of violence.” 

Springarm’s fingers brushed his tampograph on his cheek.  A reflex, seeking reassurance. He saw Wheelarch’s optic quirk, catching the gesture, and gave a sheepish grin. Superstition, yes.  He and Wheelarch had argued, teased about it for megacycles. His faith was unshaken. He had seen the best, most selfish a mech could be. He knew the best.  It was the other corner of his world. “There are better things to worship,” he murmured, a wry smile flirting over his mouth.

“Yes,” Wheelarch said, optics glowing, earnest, and no matter how hard Springarm tried, he could hear no mockery.


	5. Chapter 5

“Officer Springarm.” He didn’t recognize the voice—hushed, urgent.  It sounded vaguely familiar, but not enough to place.  Springarm felt his optics cycle on, warming slowly in the darkness.

“Yes.”  Sub-voc, his vocalizer still offlined from recharge. He and Wheelarch had switched to night muster, almost in unison, without any debate or discussion. The killer worked at night? They would, too.  Which left dayshift for recharge, a weird, inverted sort of life.

“It’s…it’s Flywheel. You said to call if I think of anything.”

Springarm sat up on his berth. “You’ve thought of something.”

“Found  something, more like.”  A pause. “C-can we meet?”

“Now?”  He swung his legs off the berth, already moving, despite the protests of his sleep-mode cold servos.

“Bad time?”

“No. I have a few hours before I’m on shift.”

A huff of relief. “All right.  Can we meet here? The apartment?”

“Sure.” Springarm crossed to the threshold. “Be there soon.”  He cut the connection, halfway to the outer door.  He stopped, cocking his head, sending a private no-ping note to Wheelarch.  “Possible lead.  Be back soon.”  It wasn’t worth waking his twin, and he hoped, as he crossed the threshold, he’d have something to report.

[***]

“…I thought you should see them.”  Flywheel stepped back, almost nervous, pointing to the packet on the low table.  “Just back from the developers.”  He edged around the table, as if afraid to even be in the same room with the packet.

Springarm dropped to one knee, opening the packet, wondering why Flywheel seemed so…almost afraid of them. Just pictures, right?  “Artist. You meant photographer.”

A gulp. “Yes. He said real art was in seeing reality. Not arranging it.  Real beauty was nature, not artifice.” He gave a shrug, someone repeating someone else’s pronouncements, believing them utterly, even if he didn’t entirely understand them.

“Beauty.”  The photo flimsies spilled onto the table. He began thumbing over them.  Angles of pipes. Scrawls of graffiti shot from strange angles, the glyphs looming , distorted.  There, two mechs who might have been embracing, maybe fighting.  And.

His hands lifted one by the edges. An expression of agony, twisting a face, a shoulder pinned to the ground by a steel staple, while some sort of apparatus was siphoning energon either into, or out of, his lines.  It took him a full decaklik to realize that…he knew that mech. 

Drift. 

Suddenly the scratches and scores he’d seen on the armor seemed…sinister.  Awful. 

“Bleeding,” Flywheel said.

He nodded, dully.  Body-energon, it was rumored, was a delicacy. An intoxicating fuel, more potent than high grade. He’d heard of it, but it was one of those things you wanted to believe was some metaphor, some horror story of class-warfare, the rich literally feeding on the poor, sucking their substance. But here…evidence. 

Except nothing he could use.

He tilted the envelope. “Nothing wider angle?”

Flywheel shook his head. “He always tried to frame for what he thought was important.”

A small chuff of frustration. You’d think getting the guilty parties on film would be ‘important’…? Art, he thought sourly, had the wrong priorities.

No, he wasn’t thinking like an artist. And really, he supposed, the mix of rage and helplessness and pain, the pride of a mech who refused to surrender, even in pain, even while trapped…there was a kind of stark, raw message in there.  A sort of dignity or at least something important, something that should be seen, be witnessed.

If not fixed.

He forced himself to lower the picture. “You think this is connected.”

Flywheel nodded, taking another step back. “One of the bleeders could have seen him.”  His hands wrung. “I don’t know. I…it might be connected. I didn’t think he had enemies but….” He took a step back from the table, optics bouncing away from the pictures, as if afraid that the threat might be contagious.

Springarm stood up, piling the flimsies together, sliding them into the envelope. “Good thought. You were right to call.”

“I…I don’t want them here.” 

“They might be evidence. I’d have to take them, anyway.” 

The trike seemed to sag with relief. “Thank you.” 

Springarm tucked the envelope in his storage. “Actually thank you for bringing this to me. It could be important.”

“I really want to help. Solve it, I mean.  Since, you know, I can’t really do anything else. Can’t, you know, undo it.”

Springarm nodded. He knew that all too well. You can’t fix a problem: the best you can hope for is to try to trim off some of the ugliness. Pull the blade so it can heal over.  No. He shook his head: his own analogies were inadequate, but then again, the very idea that anything could heal so gaping a wound as death…was ridiculous. “If you think of, or find, anything else…?”  He faltered, aware he’d probably said the same thing about a half-dozen times.  But  formulaic  phrases stood in for the unspeakable at times: a stopgap, a half-measure. But a half-measure was sometimes better than nothing.

And he wanted—needed—to talk to Drift.

[***]

The guttermech refused to return to the station with that flat hard denial that was like running top speed into a steel wall.  They’d settled on a small bar, close to the Dead End. Drift was lurking outside when Springarm arrived, rolling to a fast stop outside the door.  They said nothing beyond a few perfunctory words needed to order, Drift simply muttering, “I’ll have what he’s having.”  Springarm wondered if, like the map, the menu might have been a puzzle to Drift, too many choices and no navigation.

The attendant brought the order, leaving the two orange cubes in front of them, whisking Springarm’s credit chit away.  Drift took a hungry sip. “What.”

The bluntness was almost…refreshing.  Springarm hated, for a moment, what he was about to do. “Bleeding.” He studied the mech for a response.

Drift did not disappoint, the mouth going flat, the red optics flaring, then dulling.  The hands clutched around the cube.  “What about it.”

“You.”  Springarm let his optics trail up the wrist.  Yes. The scratches weren’t from a rough arrest. He could see that now.

Drift snarled, clapping one hand over the elbow joint Springarm was studying. “It happens.” 

“I imagine.” He took a slow sip of his energon. “How many, Drift?  How many to hold you down?”

A flare of emotion, hard to read, anger and shame combined.  He tilted his head down, aggressive, barely able to squeeze the word out between rage-hardened mouthplates. “Enough.”

Springarm leaned forward. “Who? Do you have names?”

Drift recoiled.  “Don’t really introduce themselves.  Don’t bother to ask my name, either.”  The hand tightened on the cube. Another almost angry drink. 

“How do they…?”

A shrug, one deep spaulder tracing an arc. “Come up behind you.  Bring you some place.  They’ve used luremechs.  Promises of food.  Whole bunch of tactics.”

“Some place private?”

A hard glare, almost questioning how Springarm could be so stupid. “No one stops ‘em. Even in the middle of the hallway. Don’t want to get involved.”

Involved, or on the list, drained as well. “We can stop this, Drift.” He leaned forward, earnest, grabbing at the hand on the cube as familiarly as he would have grabbed Wheelarch’s.  “We can do something.”

Drift stared at the hand on his, shaking his head. “Can’t stop anything.”

“We can.”  Springarm’s optics blazed, fervid with hope.  Hadn’t he just been thinking how helpless, how futile it was to solve a crime to patch up a death? Here was something real, something right. Something he could change that would make a real difference.

Drift sneered.  “No. You can’t. You take out one bleeder crew, it just means less competition for the others.  Or.  Another crew. Less good at it. And you die.”  Fury in his optics, hooking at his mouthplates, hard over some history he didn’t want to talk about. 

“You’re not suggesting we just let it continue?”

“Why not.  Never cared before, your kind.”

Springarm sat back, stunned. His…kind?

Drift took another drink, as though trying to prove he was deliberately abusing Springarm’s generosity. “Your kind,” he picked up. “Job. Home. Stability.”  The envy was naked in his voice, almost stripping it raw. 

“Drift, it’s…it’s not like that. We went into Security because we wanted to help.” What other answer was there to that? What had Rung expected to hear? Why did the answer seem so weak now? 

“You arrest mechs. How does that help?”

“It makes things safer.”

“We try.”  Springarm caught the server’s optic, signally for another round, even though his own cube was barely touched.

“Not hard enough, and too hard.” Drift twitched backward as the next round was delivered, the empty cube whisked away.  He glared at it, as though he could boil it away with his stare. “Don’t have any useful information. Bribe isn’t going to work.”

“It’s not a bribe, Drift.”

The optics met his, the red seeming to bore into him.  “Then why.”

Springarm struggled with the answer, Drift primed to be offended no matter what he said. And even if he said nothing.  Finally, the blunt truth. “Because it makes me feel better, no matter how temporary or small, that you get enough fuel, at least this once.”

A long stare. “Charities for that.”

“I know.” Springarm shifted.  Like Drift would go to a charity. “So maybe I’m vain. Or maybe it’s…I want to see it, for my own ego.”  A shrug. Maybe he wanted to be kind to someone who reminded him of Valve.  “I don’t know.”

The optics seemed to travel over his face as though exploring the contours, the lines, reading his armor and finding…truth.

“Don’t use the charities, anyway,” Drift whispered. His battered fingers clutched against the cube, greedy, yet ashamed of his own greed. 

“I didn’t think you would.”

A twitch of the mouthplates. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I want to.” The words blurted from his mouth almost before they could stop him. They both sat, stunned, silent, as though a low-level charge had gone off and they were both deafened by it. 

“You don’t.” Drift’s voice, almost sad. “Not worth getting to know. Just another gutter crawler.”

“A survivor.” 

The optics narrowed. “You don’t know what it takes to survive down there.”

“I know enough to know most mechs couldn’t do it.”

Another mouthplate twitch. It was as though Drift spoke two languages entirely; one with his voice, his few words, and another, more eloquent, with his optics, his mouth.  “Done bad things.” A jerk of his chin at Springarm’s Security Forces blazon.

“I know. I’ve seen the charge sheet.”  Springarm sat forward, hands on the table, wanting, but not daring, to touch the black hands in front of him. “You’re more than a list of charges, Drift. I want…I want to get to know that. The real mech, not just what fits on a flimsy.”  It sounded…incredibly lame, as he heard it echo in his own audio, for all that he meant it, every syllable. Valve. What might have happened if someone had sat across from him, one time, and said these words? Before he had gone too far?

And was it fair to treat Drift as some chance to make up for what he’d failed to do with his own triplet?

But he could tell right away he’d gone too far, pushed too hard.  Drift tilted back, his entire body stiffening, optics glazing and hard. More words in that silent language he found he wanted to learn.

“Drift,” he said. Then stopped, his comm giving a harsh, insistent beep.  He swore, making an apologetic wince to the other mech, before hitting the silenced comm channel.  //On.//

//Another one. Or, at least,// the dispatcher sounded harried, //something close.  Captain Orion said you and Wheelarch should be contacted.// That last to head off the objection that it wasn’t his work shift.  An objection he had no intention of making.

He checked his chrono, beckoning with one hand for his credit chit. //On my way.//

Drift caught his gaze, already scooting off the bench. “What.”

“I have to go.”

A telling jerk of the chin. “Dead End.”

“Yes.”

A sudden duck as the server returned the credit chit, reaching around Drift’s dark frame.  “Coming with you.”

“Drift, I…,” he paused, taking in the offer, clumsily worded as it was. He nodded. “I’d appreciate it.”


	6. Chapter 6

“What do we have?” Springarm unfolded as he got to the cordon. He could sense Drift, behind him, not moving closer, sliding into the gathering crowd. It had meant something that the mech wanted to come with him, thought he was some level of protection.  Security wasn’t loved in the lower zones, but very, very few were stupid enough to aggress against them.  Still, there was a strange comfort in having the dark mech roll beside him, nearly able to keep up with his driving.  He had a crazy thought, of asking the other mech to race against him one day. Maybe that would bring a smile to the hard face.

“Still alive,” the medic said, jerking him back to reality.  “Maybe they called you guys too early.”

“Still an assault,” Springarm said, blandly.  Maybe it was meant to be funny?  Rodion was a very different place than Nyon. He shook his head. This case, these murders, were getting to him. He stepped closer.

Another biwheel.  Another mutilated tire, and a series of appalling stabs through the chassis, as though violently ripping toward the spark.

Wheelarch was there before him, pushing up to his feet as Springarm approached.  Wheelarch looked down, swearing roundly.  It took Springarm a klik, before he noticed the smears of energon down Wheelarch’s legs. “Sorry,” Wheelarch said, swiping down his legs, smearing the stuff, futilely.  “Saw he was still alive. I was trying to help.”

Springarm shrugged it off. “Of course you were.”  It didn’t matter. Saving the life of the victim was more important than smearing a few clues.  They stepped back, letting the medic bustle past them.

Wheelarch frowned, staring at the wet footprints he left, a trail of energon.

“That tells us something right there, though,” Springarm said. “We know the attacker was gone before the major leaking.”

Bleeding, he thought, suddenly.  No. It didn’t fit.

He felt Wheelarch’s gaze studying his face, and gave a sheepish shrug.  “Hey, do you think this is related?”

“To the other deaths?”

Springarm nodded. 

Wheelarch turned back to the body, optics narrowed, curious.  “You don’t think so?”

“Possibly. I may have a motive.”

“Really?”  Wheelarch’s face was washed out in the sudden flare of crime scene lights. 

He felt a sudden insecurity, the surety washing out of him. “Maybe.  What do you think about bleeding?”

“Bleeding?”  The light carved Wheelarch’s helm into sharp lines. He shook his head. “Yeah, not this one.”  Another moment. “Not seeing it at all, really.”

Springarm frowned, deflating. It had seemed so solid, talking to Drift, talking to Flywheel. Now it sounded…histrionic. Melodramatic.  “You’re right.” 

“No,” Wheelarch said, turning back to face him. “Not necessarily. Just not seeing it right now. With this one. Because, yeah.  Lot of bleeding, none of it collected.” He scanned over Springarm’s face. “You have something?”

“I thought I did.”  Not quite so sure, now.  He caught a strange expression on Wheelarch’s face. “I’ll tell you later,” he said, hurriedly.  “I promise.”

The light cast a sharp sidelit shadow from Wheelarch’s smile. “I’ll hold you to it.”

“Any ID on this one?”

Wheelarch shook his head. “Checked that while I was down there…,” a sheepish wince, “contaminating the evidence. No ident codes, no registry or district codes.”

“Another gutter unknown.” Springarm thought of Drift—if he died, would they recognize him?  “Someone has to know him, though.  Even the lowest guttercrawler had friends.  Or enemies.”

Wheelarch nodded. “We’ll keep asking around.” 

Springarm scanned the crowd, finding, somehow, Drift’s face in the sea of suspicious, guarded red optics. “We will.”

[***]

“So,” Wheelarch said, dropping to a seat next to Springarm on the battered service bench they used in their main room, “bleeding.”

Springarm reached into his storage, drawing out the packet of pictures. “These were Arcweld’s.”

He took a sip of his cube as Wheelarch flipped through the photoflimsies. “It’s real. It happens.”

“And you think it’s tied to the case?” Wheelarch’s optics tilted with concern, over the top of the flimsies.

“Someone might have seen Arcweld take these pictures.”

“But,” Wheelarch thumbed through them again, slowly, squinting. “You can’t identify everyone. Not even the victim, really.”

Springarm hesitated.  It felt like a secret, not to tell Wheelarch that he knew it was Drift.  But the gutter mech had little enough dignity.  If it became important, it would be different. “If he was seen, whoever saw him might not have known that.”

“Or, we might not have all the pictures.”  He riffled the flimsies.

Springarm tilted his head, feeling a bit sheepish. “Good point. I hadn’t thought of that.”  He frowned. “Should probably have thought of that.”  Maybe he wasn’t half as good at this as he thought. 

Wheelarch grinned. “Hey, that’s why we’re partners, right? You aren’t supposed to solve everything by yourself.”

Springarm subsided back into the seat.  “I know. I just…Rodion. It’s a big place. And I want us to do real good here.”

Wheelarch looked up from the photoflimsies again, tilted his head, then laid the flimsies on a low table.  “We are, Springarm.” He reached forward, resting one hand on Springarm’s folded ankle.  “Have faith in us.”

“Us.”  His smile wavered. “You don’t worry, sometimes?”

“Of course I do.” A flicker of a smile. “But we know better than stupid rumors.” 

“Rumors.” Springarm dropped his head back, helm resting against his shoulder armor, staring almost blankly at the ceiling. “But we’ve seen what rumors can do.” He could still feel the cold hole near his spark, like a bullet shot through him, as he’d stood in front of their old commander, as he told them, seriously, a look of something like nausea on his face, about the rumors.

And the wild offers, desperate claims they’d made, to remove even the appearance of anything like friendship.  And the cold terror that both had suffered, that night, in the small apartment they shared, too terrorized by the rumors to even brush each others’ hands in private, for comfort, for fear of invisible gazes, invisible judgments.

“It won’t happen here,” Wheelarch said.  “That was a small town. Narrow minded. Parochial.  Rodion’s a city.”  He gave a solid, brusque nod. “Different here.”

“You’re right.”  He managed a smile, feeling the tension begin to recede in his belly.

“Of course I am,” Wheelarch said, reaching forward, covering Springarm’s hand with his own. Springarm tensed, forced himself to relax. 

“Sorry,” he said, with a nervous laugh, deliberately flipping his hand over, to take Wheelarch’s hand in his, palm welcoming palm.

A flash of a frown under the crimson helm. “Stupid, that we can’t even do this much—what any mech might offer to a mech in distress.”

“You’re right,” Springarm said, chastened. Then, emboldened, he tugged his twin closer, opening his arms.  “We did nothing wrong. We won’t do anything wrong.”  Wheelarch gave a satisfied chirr, nestling against his twin.  The pictures were forgotten, the past was forgotten, and the two lay there, simply…being together. He wondered why it took so much for him to yield to this.

How could this be wrong?


	7. Chapter 7

“At least it’s a break,” Whirl was saying, resting one foot on the bench, bending over it to rub the Security Forces issue high-gloss wax onto his armor panels. “And I can’t really complain about a chance to polish up.”  He looked up, his sole gold optic glittering. 

“He’s got a point, Springarm,” Wheelarch swatted his twin’s tire with a rag.  “You can loosen up. We’re still on the clock, after all.”

Whirl’s optic winked. “Exactly. Getting paid to be pretty and stand around and see how the other half lives? I’m not complaining.”

“And you complain about everything!”  Sunblaze cut in, reaching across Whirl for the tire gloss. It was a tease: Whirl did complain, but he was a good mech, and had been the first to greet Springarm and Wheelarch. Really greet them, try to show them around Rodion.

 

“Yes, but…it just seems like we should be trying to solve the crime.”            




Whirl shrugged. “That’s how these things work, though, when the nobility gets involved.  They have to stand around and tell you how to do your job so they can tell their constituents they’re on top of things.”

“On top of my last nerve,” Sunblaze muttered. “I’m with Springarm.  Right now? Really bad time to have to slam on the brakes for Senator Trigintus and his entourage.”

“Eh,” Whirl shifted back, reaching for a polishing rag. “Dead won’t get any deader.”  He looked up. “What? Just being practical.  And frag. Maybe we could use the break. Let the cortex cool down a bit.”

Wheelarch held out a hand for the tire-gloss. “Complaining or not isn’t going to change that today, we’re on escort duty. Might as well try to enjoy it, right?”

Springarm sighed. “Yes. You’re right.” And Whirl was right. Sometimes letting the cortex reboot was the best thing.

“Of course I am. Now, turn around and I’ll get your drivetrain tire.” A pause, and a chuckle.  “I promise I’ll try not to tickle.”

Springarm gave a nervous laugh, turning, self-consciously, to present his kibble, aware—too aware—of the gazes upon them.  Wheelarch’s touch was firm and businesslike, the rag slicking the tire-gloss over the rubber, then swiping back around, catching any spill into the rim.

“Must be nice,” Sunblaze said, sighing. “Having a frame-twin like that.”

“It is,” Wheelarch said, bending over to flick a bit of dust from the tire mount.

“You transferred together, right?”

Springarm stiffened, but Wheelarch covered with a quick apology, as though he’d accidentally pinched something.  “Yes,” he managed. 

“Twins,” Wheelarch said, blandly. 

“Oh wow.” Open envy in Sunblaze’s voice. 

Springarm tilted his helm, optics flicking.  Not here. Not again.

Not already.  Would they have to leave, again? Run away from rumor? 

“I mean,” Sunblaze said, “that’s cool. Partners, you know? Like an automatic best friend.”  He didn’t look judgmental. He looked…envious.

Wheelarch gave a soft laugh, whisking the rag over Springarm’s upper tire.  “It is cool.  Went through the Academy together—we looked out for each other.  Both of us made it, or neither would.” He glowed with pride.

 Springarm could feel the smile against his back, like a warm radiation. He nodded. Those were good memories. And the warmth of those memories evaporated his worry. It was silly. Wheelarch was right. No one would be that parochial here. He reached back, playfully snatching the rag out of Wheelarch’s hand, a too-rare smile stretching his mouthplates. “Your turn.”

[***]

Senator Trigintus swept through the Rodion Security building as though he were a force of nature. His blue armor seemed to catch the light, some paint technique or deep polish coruscating light over his surfaces.  The heavy cape—some alien affectation Springarm had only seen on holovids, never in life—seemed to rustle with a life of its own, trailing after him, eddying the air.

“And where,” the Senator said, his voice plummy, full of command, “Is this Captain Pax?”

“Here.” Orion Pax stepped from the head of the line. “Senator Trigintus,” he added, stiffly, inclining his head.

“Ah.” The greenblue optics of the upper nobility scanned Orion Pax for a long moment, as though he were calculating a price.  “You are the one in charge of this…investigation.”

“I am.” 

A recoiling movement of the head, like a serpent preparing to strike, as much as it was a drawing away. “And what progress have you made?”  Even Springarm could tell this was not a question as much as a rope for Orion Pax to hang himself by.

“We have identified the victims. We have established a modus operandi.”

An airy, dismissive wave of the hand. “Suspects.”

Orion bridled, startled at the cut off. “None, yet.”

“Yet.” A showy turn of the head, as though posing for a holovid. 

“We must be careful,” Orion Pax said, smoothly, as though regaining his footing.

“Careful. Yes, you surely wouldn’t want to cause a panic.”  Something pointed in the tone that put Springarm on edge.

“Precisely.” A relieved motion of the shoulders.

“Such as, you know, sowing panic through the media with wild stories.” A smirk over the polished face plates.

Orion’s blue shoulder juddered to a sudden stop, as a well-oiled smile spread over the Senator’s face. “Senator. I assure you that—“

“I assure _you_ , Captain Pax,” the smile grew barbs, hooking into the title, “that I have a duty to the public and that involves both insisting that crimes get solved—promptly—and that there is no…needless hysteria.”

Needless hysteria.  Springarm and Wheelarch exchanged a glance of disbelief. Springarm didn’t know what he’d expected from a Senator, but…not this.  He was acting as though they weren’t even trying. Insisting didn’t solve crimes.  If this was Rodion, maybe things weren’t so bad in Nyon.

Springarm felt frustration boil up, boil over. “It’s not needless,” he blurted, optics blazing as the Senator wheeled to face him, looking vaguely offended. 

“And your judgment qualifications are….?”  A quirk of the cheekplate. 

“I’ve seen the bodies. All of them.”  A challenge in his optics, though his tanks were whirling.  And this time, he could sense Wheelarch trying to gesture him down.  “The killer is targeting one frame type. Wounds made to hurt before the fatal blow.”  His mouth tightened. “I’d say that’s not ‘needless’ to warn your constituents.”

“Constituents,” the Senator said. “I’d heard there was only one victim.”

One who mattered, Springarm knew the Senator meant, one who could vote.

“He’s escalating,” Wheelarch said, from behind the Senator.  “Sure,” he pitched his voice falsely casual, “he started with blank sparks, mechs no one would miss, walking salvage.”  A sneer he might have stolen from Whirl.  “Now he’s moving up.  Mechs with names. Registries. Addresses.” His optics tilted, glittering with a light Springarm had never seen before. “Who knows how much further he’ll reach?”

The Senator puffed up, armor lifting on hydraulics, before subsiding, quelled.

“Springarm, Wheelarch.” Orion Pax’s optics darted between the two, his tone on the edge of admonishment. 

A twitch of Wheelarch’s mouth. “Sorry, sir.  We just figured the Senator would want to interview the mechs who had done the investigating. So he can report back to his constituents that he went straight to the source instead of…swirling  around bureaucracy.”  He stepped back in line after a final, sharp nod.  Springarm felt himself subside, too, receding to his place, heat rushing suddenly to his faceplates, as though appalled at what he had just done. Mouthed off to a Senator.  Good job, Springarm. Come to Rodion, under a cloud, and draw attention to yourself by going toe plate to toe plate with a Senator.  Clean start?  Already smeared. 

And the look in Captain Orion Pax’s optics told him that this would hardly be the end of the matter.

[***]

And it wasn’t. Springarm could feel the high gloss wax, the tire-wet, almost suffocating him as the office door shut behind him. He snapped to parade rest, arms folded over his tire, optics locking ahead. Beside him, Wheelarch did the same: still and statuesque, like a pair of caryatids.

“Springarm,” Orion Pax began. “That was…a breach of protocol.”

Springarm’s mouth tensed. He hadn’t been given permission to speak. And though Orion Pax  wasn’t anything like their previous captain, Springarm clung to official rules.

“You’re…new here, both of you.” A sigh. “Senator Trigintus is…difficult to deal with.”

“We noticed,” Wheelarch said, blandly. 

“Sir,” Springarm said. If Wheelarch was going to get in trouble, he’d be right there with him. Just like the Academy.  They won, or lost, together. “He was impugning our department.”

“I had it handled.”

A snort, from Wheelarch. “Handled.”

Orion Pax turned, almost startled. “The Senator must be treated carefully.”

“Why?” Wheelarch said, shrugging, the shoulder cannons lifting. “Didn’t look that fragile to me.”

“I meant,” and Orion Pax sighed, as though trying to put as much air between himself and what he was going to say. “He controls our budget, in a very real way.”

“He should,” Springarm said, “realize that solving the crime is more important than stroking his ego.” It was common sense: the goal was to keep Rodion safe, right?

“Should.” Orion Pax spoke with a wry finality. He agreed with them, but had a larger loyalty.  Springarm didn’t envy his position. “Both of you have overstepped, however. And we cannot breach protocol.” 

The two exchanged a glance, rueful, accepting, subsiding into silence that wasn’t quite apologetic.

“The Senator has requested a security detail for a gala tonight.”

Another exchange of glances, this time mutually dismayed. 

“Only one of you will go.” A stern look.  “Perhaps it’s time you started working alone.”

Springarm looked shocked, for a klik, before he mastered himself. That…hurt.  He set his mouth. “I’ll go.” He had spoken out first: it was only right.   And he’d swallow the hurt with him.  If you’re so afraid of mechs and their gossip, what better way than to demonstrate you could function without each other?

Orion nodded, satisfied. “All right.” He turned to Wheelarch. “The latest victim is online. They’re holding him at Deltaran.”

Wheelarch nodded. “I’ll see what I can get.”  One last exchanged glance. “Sir. We’re sorry. We just want to get this solved.” 

“Me too, Wheelarch,” Orion Pax said, nodding.  A long silence, teetering on the edge of awkward. “And we’ll get there,” Orion Pax added, his voice warming.  “We will. With or without the Senator’s ‘help’.” Apparently, punishment had been meted out.  Springarm could live with that. 


	8. Chapter 8

The gala was everything Springarm had dreaded: glittering and shallow, bubbling with vapid conversation.

No, he told himself. They are citizens, as well. You did not only sign up for Security Forces for the poor, for mechs like Flywheel and Arcweld.  You wanted to make things better for everyone.  Even those better than you. Envying those with more wealth, more luxury, wasn’t right. That wasn’t what Cybertron was about: it wasn’t the highest ideals of the Matrix. 

He wasn’t sure that this was, either, though: glittering lights, the melodic tinkle of crystal, the ringing shimmer of water cascading down chimes, as highly polished, sleek mechs swung around in a dance of civility. Matters of state, as well as lowbrow gossip, seemed to sludge around the room, energy and noise, money and oily power.

And he? He was invisible, a mere decoration. A thing, like the fountain or the trays of food shuttled around on server drones.  Something that existed simply to enhance another’s prestige.

It was, he discovered, humiliating. 

But better off than many mechs were, he knew.  What would Arcweld have done with this opportunity? What beauty would he have seen? What significance would he have caught with his camera?

A ripple interrupted his thoughts, drawing his attention, his hand moving to his issue pistol. He was, after all, at least nominally a guard here.  He stepped closer to a knot of mechs gathered around, he realized, a cut crystal bowl.  Inside, a liquid that seemed almost alive, swirling and shifting.  It was captivating to watch, and try as he might, Springarm could see no device to cause the motion.

A mew of appreciation. “So, Trigintus,” a voice said, “You really did spare nothing on the luxuries for us.”

The Senator beamed.  “Nothing but the best for the best mechs of Cybertron.”

The phrase seemed to rankle in Springarm’s mind; he took an unconscious step backwards. And another when it struck him what must be in the bowl.

Blood energon. 

His tanks seemed to flip, fizzing as though someone had poured a surfactant in them, caustic and harsh.  He thought of Drift, the picture of his face, wracked with pain and fury.  It was…cannibalism, of some sort, getting drunk off their pain.  Did they know how it was collected? Did they care?

The assembled mechs barely registered his retreat, stepping in to fill the void, pushing closer to the rippling, almost glowing liquid.  He was glad, perversely, to have it blocked from his sight.

But it didn’t, it couldn’t, block the memory from his cortex. Who were the real monsters? How dare Trigintus flounce through their office, as though he had clean hands?

[***]

Wheelarch was sitting in the locker room when Springarm arrived.  The last cycle of his shift at the party had been nearly unbearable, both for the separation from his twin and the company.  He’d gotten Wheelarch’s distressed comm as soon as he activated his personal comm. 

“Hey,” Wheelarch’s voice was almost shaking.  “I think that’s the, uh, the last time Captain Orion Pax asks me to handle an interrogation.” A forced laugh, brittle and entirely humorless.

“What happened?” Springarm cut the channel to subvoc, flipping to his vehicle mode. “Are you at the station?” His engines roared with worry.

“Yes,” Wheelarch had said. “Just got done with the debriefing.”

Debriefing.  Springarm felt a pang of worry. “I’ll be there soon.”

He’d cut the comm, racing back to the station, tires heating from his speed, and he didn’t stop until he was at the door of the locker room.  He dropped down beside his brightly-colored twin.  “Do you want to talk about it?”

A wry smile. “Already have, at the debrief. Endlessly.”  A weak joke, a bad one, but the attempt meant something between them. 

Springarm squeezed Wheelarch’s hand. 

Wheelarch squeezed back, the smile gaining a bit of strength.  “He, uh, he died.  While I was talking to him.”

Springarm’s spark seemed to chill. The dead were one thing, but to watch the life and color and light actually drain from a mech’s optics? It was…horrifying.

“I’m…I’m so sorry. If we hadn’t messed up earlier today I would have been there with you.” Or he could have done it. But then what? It would have likely been him on the bench, a huddled mass, and Wheelarch struggling to find comforting words. Was that an improvement?

Wheelarch shook his head, folding his other hand over their joined ones, his optics warm and hungry. “Please, don’t blame yourself.” 

Springarm mustered a smile. “Don’t worry about me.” 

The red armor shifted under the light. “I was asking him questions,” he began, reciting, it seemed, as much for his own comfort as to tell Springarm, “And…suddenly…he went into a kind of seizure.  Like a circuit shorting.  I ran out to get help and…by the time we returned, there was….there was nothing we could do.”

“You did your best.”

“I…tried.”  The optics slid off his, overwrought.  But Wheelarch recovered, spinal struts straightening. “I did—maybe—get a lead.” 

“Oh?” Not pressing, he hoped.  It wasn’t the time for it.  Some things, as selfish as the thought might be, were more immediate, if not more important, than solving the crime.

“He said he was lured down there.”

“Lured.”  Springarm tilted his head, considering, optics going distant.

Wheelarch nodded.  “That means the killer is contacting them, somehow.”

“Somehow.” How? 

“There has to be some…message board or something.” 

“Private channels or public listed?”  It would be really, really intimate to give out a private channel.  He had  Wheelarch’s. 

“Didn’t say. And,” a sheepish shrug, almost a wince, “I didn’t think to ask.”

“It’s nothing.” He imagined seeing a mech, as damaged as the victim had been, was more than a little unsettling. They didn’t have these crimes back home.  At least, not that they’d ever seen.  “Did he say what for?”

Wheelarch shook his head. “No. He looked like he was going to, but….” The helpless shrug. Springarm knew better than to press. 

“It’s something we can look into.”  Movement, momentum. They could both use it, break the illusion, the feeling, of spinning wheels.

“Yes,” Wheelarch said, a flicker of a smile, almost his old self. “But…tomorrow.”

A warmer smile, understanding.  It was so rare that Wheelarch revealed any need—like a precious thing, Springarm wanted to cradle.“Yes.” 


	9. Chapter 9

“All right.”  Wheelarch handed over the spool.  “Maybe you can hear something I didn’t.” 

“Wheelarch, you didn’t have to,” Springarm took the dataspool, cut to the time of the interview. 

“I know.  But we need to solve this, and if this helps?” He shrugged. “What’s a little privacy, right?”

“It’s audio only,” Wheelarch said. “Video feed was fuzzy on playback from the life support systems.”

It made sense. He pressed play, nodding. 

_Wheelarch’s voice: “I’m with Rodion Security.”  A pause. “Yes. Of course.”_

Wheelarch, sitting awkwardly next to Springarm, shrugged. “The medtech. Wanted to see some identification.”

Springarm nodded.

_On the tape. Wheelarch’s voice again. “All right.  I won’t take much of your time.  But we’re…trying to get to the bottom of this and anything—anything—you can give us to help would be most appreciated.”_

_A mumbled sound, the audio picking up the other mech’s voice as half-tinny._

_“All right.  It says by registry your name is Raceslick, yes?”_

_Another mumble.  Then, that voice picked up.  “I’ll do what I can.”  It seemed an effort to squeeze the words out._

_“Of course.  We can always talk more later. This is just preliminaries.”_

_“I want to help…., but…don’t know anything useful.”_

_A pause. “Let us decide that all right? You might not know what’s a good clue. Just tell me anything you can remember.”_

_A clicking sound._

_Wheelarch’s voice again. “Take your time.”_

_Another click.  “Got a call to go down there. Had a stunner.” A hiss. “Yeah, I know. Illegal.”_

“We didn’t find a stunner down there,” Springarm said, stopping the playback. Wheelarch nodded.

_“Hit me from behind.”_

_“Hit you.”_

_A grating sound. “Drivetire. Slewed hard and hit the wall. By the time I untangled myself, he was on me.”_

_“On you.”_

_“Weight like….on me. And then, my tire.” A broken sound._

_“The tire.”_

“Frag this sounds awkward,” Wheelarch muttered.  His hands shifted nervously on the table.

“It’s protocol,” Springarm said. Echoing, exactly as they taught it at the Academy.  Repeat the last phrase, so the thread of the story doesn’t get lost.

“I know. Just…sounds really stupid. Stilted.”

“It works.”

Wheelarch gave a shrug, accepting.

_“Tire. It…sharp pain. I, I don’t know. It hurt. And then it just kept…and….”_

_“Don’t upset yourself,” Wheelarch’s voice, barely hiding agitation. “Take your time.”_

_“I know. I’m sorry. I’m trying.”_

_“I know you are. And this is really helpful.” A pause, enough for a soothing smile. “Did you see anything? Get a look at him?”_

_“Yes. Well. Sort of.”_

_“Sort of. What did you see?”_

_The audio pickup stabilized, as though Raceslick had found some reserve of strength. “Didn’t get a clear look. Not at his face or anything.”_

_“But you saw something.”_

_“Yes.” A creak, like a nod._

_“What did you see?”_

_“Gold.”_

_“Optics? Armor?”_

_A hesitation. “Opti—armor? I don’t remember.”_

_“Anything you tell us could help.”_

_“I know. I know.”  A long pause, the playback spooling quietly. “Oh! Red! He had re—augh!”_

Springarm’s optics leapt to Wheelarch’s face, which had gone taut.  Wheelarch stopped the playback. “He had a seizure,” Wheelarch said. “Right then. I…didn’t know what to do. I ran out to get a tech.”

Springarm winced. “Must have been pretty bad to watch.”

“I…missed the worst of it. By the time I came back, he was…gone.”   Wheelarch stared at his hands. “I pushed him too hard. I overexcited him.”




“No,” Springarm said, firmly. “It’s not your fault.”

A shrug, half-believing.

Springarm vented a deep cycle. That must have been…unsettling.  Still. “Well. So he was lured down there.  He was hit from behind and then the tire was attacked. And the attacker had red, or gold, optics.” 

“Not much.” Wheelarch sighed.

“Not much, but something,” Springarm corrected. “These pieces will fit together. Somehow.”

Wheelarch frowned, reaching for the playback device. “I wish I had your faith.”

Springarm rested his hand on his twin’s.  Frag old prejudices. “I’ll believe for both of us.”

[***]

“Hey.”  Whirl caught at Springarm’s shoulder. “Got some…news.”  His sole optic glinted. 

“Bad news,” Springarm guessed.  He cast a worried glance back at Wheelarch. 

“Kind of.  You know that mech.  Flywheel.”

Springarm always felt a bit at a disadvantage with Whirl—the mech’s faceless design made his emotions hard to read.  But his voice seemed a bit…gleeful, for bad news.

“Did something happen?”

“Not really.”

Definitely pleased, at least at drawing out the reveal, parceling out the information.  “What did you find out?”

“Did he tell you about that big fight he got into with the vic the night of the murder?”

Springarm exchanged a glance with Wheelarch, dismayed.  The look told everything Whirl might want to know.

“Yeah. Interesting he didn’t tell you that, huh.”

Wheelarch frowned. “No. He didn’t.”  And ‘interesting’ wasn’t the word he’d use. ‘Complicating’, perhaps. ‘Disappointing’.

Springarm thought of the flashsnaps.  Flywheel had seemed legitimately concerned, frightened to have them in his possession.  If he were guilty, why would he…?

“Yeah,” Whirl continued. “Apparently a big one. Corroborated by neighbors.”

“About?” Wheelarch prompted. 

“What else?” A shrug. “Money. Apparently our friend Arcweld was way behind on rent.”

Springarm shook his head. “So he killed him? That doesn’t make any sense.” The dead don’t draw an income.

 “Murder never does,” Whirl said, sagacious.  “Stick around long enough and you’ll see.”

“He could have tried to make it look like the others,” Wheelarch said. “So, he’s not the real multiple killer.” 

“That doesn’t explain Raceslick,” Springarm said.

“Copycat. Which is why he failed.” Wheelarch nodded. “It’s a theory,” he added. “We shouldn’t discount anything at this point.”

“True.”  Springarm sighed. “I’ll talk to him.”

“I’ll come with you,” Wheelarch said, quickly. “He might be dangerous, Springarm.  You put pressure on him, alone?”

“I can take care of myself,” Springarm turned on Wheelarch.  He gave a sudden, curt nod to Whirl, waiting until the rotary gave one last shrug, turning off down a corridor.

“I know,” Wheelarch said, retreating a step. “Just, why give him the opportunity to get ugly. Two of us there might dissuade him entirely.” He shrugged. “It would save another charge for assault.”

Springarm had to grant that point. “All right. We have to get to the bottom, one way or the other.” 


	10. Chapter 10

Flywheel looked surprised and really, Springarm thought, unhappy to see them again. Was it guilty tension?  No, he told himself. Nobody liked Security Forces.  It was natural to be on edge, especially with the material Flywheel had given him last time. And to be honest, Wheelarch glowering beside him likely didn’t help.

“Look. I really need this job,” Flywheel said.  He wrung his hands, looking back over his shoulder to the back entrance’s closed door, the handle smeared dark with oil from a thousand hands changing shift.

“We’re not here to get you fired,” Springarm said. “We just have some questions.  About Arcweld.”

“I told you everything I know.”

“No,” Wheelarch said, bluntly. “You somehow neglected to tell us about the argument you had the night before he died.”

“I didn’t…we had that fight every month!”  Flywheel looked from one to the other of them, apparently not liking what he was finding on either face.

“Every month.”

“Arcweld was…he was terrible with money. He always forgot when rent was due.  Always.”

“And you hadn’t figured out a way around it?”  Wheelarch frowned. “Seems to me that you could have figured out by now that it wasn’t productive.”

“Have you ever lived with anyone?” the trike snapped. “Let me tell you.  Arguing about rent doesn’t mean you want him dead.”

“Yeah,” Wheelarch said. He kept his optics blandly forward. “I’ve had roommates. We never argued loud enough for the neighbors to hear it.”

“We’re loud, sure. Tell me.”  The gold optics glinted under the green helm. “What’s the decibel level for murder, huh? What’s the cut off?”

“It’s not the point,” Springarm cut in.  “It’s that you didn’t tell us. I mean, consider how it looks, you withholding information.”

“I didn’t withhold it!” Flywheel said. “It just…it slipped my mind, that’s all.”

Wheelarch gave an unconvinced grunt.

“In fact, you know?”  The trike frowned. “Maybe the argument was what made him risk going down into the gutters. He’s sold some of,” his voice dropped, frame tightening, “…of that stuff before.”  He stared at his oil stained hands. “Maybe it’s partly my fault.” 

“Something to think about,” Wheelarch said.

The trike drew himself up: he wasn’t much taller than the two police mechs, but he used every iota of it now. “I have to go back to work now,” he said, coldly. “If you’re going to arrest me, you know where to find me.”

[***]

“What were you thinking?” Springarm laid the full cube in front of Wheelarch. Their basement apartment normally felt dark and a bit crowded, but now it felt snug. 

“He lied to us,” Wheelarch said, shrugging one shoulder.  As if that explained everything.

“He left something out. It’s not quite the same as lying.” Springarm seated himself across from his twin at the table, resting his elbows on the chipped table. 

“He left out something that could have made him a suspect.”

Springarm took a slow sip of his energon, nodding. It was true. “But we found out about it. He couldn’t really imagine that we wouldn’t find out.”

Wheelarch tilted his head.  “Bought him time, though, to dispose of evidence.”

Springarm frowned.  “I don’t know. I mean, he doesn’t seem like a hardened criminal. Those pictures had him really rattled.”

“Maybe not a hardened criminal, but a petty thief in over his head would know how to hide evidence, and still be scared when facing the law.”  Wheelarch stared into his cube for a long moment. “Sorry if I was rough with him. And you.  But this is a big case and we really need this one solved.” He gave a nervous laugh. “Sorry, but some mech’s feelings don’t really compare to stopping another murder.”

“No. Please don’t apologize.”  Springarm smiled. “You’re right.  Just used to back home: we never faced anything like this. I think I’m too soft for this.”

Wheelarch’s grin returned, a warm ember of a smile under his red helm. “That’s what you have me for.”  The smile grew a bit drier. “I might have been too hard. But we complement each other, don’t you think?” 

“Yes.”  Springarm had never felt so sure of anything in his life, and the warm light of their energon dispenser seemed to cast a cozy, golden glow over them both. “We’re a good team.”

The smile brightened like the eternal flame in the Matrix Temple, and Springarm could feel his twin’s happiness like a glow. “The best.”


	11. Chapter 11

The days stretched by, waiting for labwork, waiting for anything new. Other crimes, the usual ebb and flow tide of misery in Rodion’s Dead End, filled their time: thefts and vandalism, assault and Syk deals. It became a familiar cadence, almost: report, interview, board, wait.  The closed tag hung, rarely used, on the filing menu.  And after a few days, a few hundred crimes, Springarm felt the distress harden into an aching numbness.

He sighed, rolling next to Wheelarch. It was just such a comfort to have the other mech beside him. 

“Long day,” Wheelarch said.

“Yes.  We’ll get used to it, though.” He angled hard around a corner, letting the tension melt into the countersteering. It felt good to drive, cornering hard.

“Hey,” Wheelarch said, falling into his draft, easily. “You know what today is?”

Springarm faltered, his front tire wobbling on its path.  “Oh.”   And a moment later. “We haven’t gotten secure vid at our quarters yet.” Frag. Frag. Stupid. He knew they’d forgotten something in the rush of moving, inprocessing, trying to settle in, they’d forgotten.




Or had repressed it.

“Kiosk,” Wheelarch said, calmly.  “Not ideal, but he’ll understand.”

He would, too.  Springarm rolled around the last corner, slowly, and rose to his feet before the public terminal. He jerked the security panels out, Wheelarch crowding in the small booth with him, reaching around him to input the code.

A long moment and they could almost feel the transmission reaching across the space between them.

Then the screen popped on, white, pixelating down to the familiar face.

“Hey,” Valve said. “Thought maybe you forgot.”  A strained smile, realizing as he spoke that his joke…wasn’t funny.

Springarm gave a sharp nod, hoping it hid his wince. He wouldn’t forget next time.  “How’s it going?” It was always like this, starting out, awkward and weird, the time between their calls seeming to undo everything between them to raveled, ragged ends that needed to be reconnected.

Valve shrugged. “Prison. What you’d expect.”  

Springarm frowned. “We worry about you.” Despite almost forgetting. Damn. Damn.  Springarm felt like a fool.

A laugh. “Don’t.  I worry more about you two. This place is safe enough.” Valve cocked his head, smirking. “I know how to manage, at least.”

Springarm thought of Drift, suddenly, of his allusions to danger.  “Safe…enough.”

Another shrug. “I can handle it.  Honestly.”  The smile grew wry, like Springarm’s own face, only hardened.  “Been here long enough to know the ropes, Springarm.  Though,” and the corners of his hard smile softened, “it means a lot that you care.”

“Always,” Wheelarch said. The moment was thick with emotion, battering at Valve’s hardness.

Valve broke it with a laugh. “Right. So, you two owe me to make up for all this waiting I’ve been doing.  What’s happening in the outside world? Saving the world one mech at a time?”

An old joke between them. The only one they wanted to save had been Valve.

“Got a murder case. Series of them,” Wheelarch said. “Biwheels, torture, pre-mortem.”

A wince on Valve’s face. “You two are sticking together, right? Staying safe?” He looked offscreen for a klik. “Don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to either of you. You’re my lifelines.”

“Yeah,” Wheelarch said, and he let his knuckles bump the back of Springarm’s hand. “We do our best.” 

[***]

“Another identification has come in,” Orion Pax said, as they clocked in. “I thought you might want to handle it.”

“A new victim?” Springarm’s spark went cold.  And last night, he and Wheelarch had talked, enjoyed their energon, and let it all fade behind them.  They’d had a good night, a quiet night.  It seemed wrong.

“No. We would have called you. This is an identification of one of the earlier victims.”  He handed over a pad. “Someone came forward with a name.”   Daylight spun orange through the high windows of the ready room, making the city behind Orion Pax seem to glow, clean and warm. It was hard to believe that such ugliness as this case existed in that world.




Someone. Springarm had a brief flare of wonder about how much that someone coming forward had to do with Drift.  “Is he still here?”

“No.” A sigh. “They don’t trust us, in the gutters. He ran as soon as we turned our backs. But he identified and the part VIN checked out.”

“I’m taking it didn’t check out to the name he gave.” Wheelarch said.

“It didn’t. But it was clear salvage and the fact that he knew that this Redlight would have another VIN’s shoulder gimbal was about as good as we’re going to get.” 

“Is that common here? This kind of identification.” Springarm looked down at the pad, Wheelarch tilting in to read around his shoulder.

“Unfortunately.  But at least someone came forward. That’s progress.” The blue helm nodded. “It seems that going to the public helped.  Thank you for pushing for that.”  And with that, Orion Pax gave another nod, and moved on to the next team.

Wheelarch bumped Springarm’s shoulder.  “See? We’re doing it.  We’re making a difference, here.”  His smile was incandescent, brighter even than the light outside.

Springarm smiled back. “We are.” He bumped back. “And you think this is a lead?”

“Could be. We need to figure out a strategy.” Wheelarch gave a sheepish shrug. “I went in a little strong with Flywheel, there. I’d rather we, you know, have a better plan this time.”

Springarm frowned. “Nothing wrong with your approach.  But yes, it would be better if we did coordinate.” He held the pad up so they both could read it. Redlight’s file was at once very thin and thick at the same time. Same charges, over and over.

“Aptly named,” Wheelarch murmured. “No known associates.”

“Something tells me that’ll be typical of the gutters. No one knows anyone down there.”

Wheelarch nodded. “First question is, where do we start? How to find a mech who nobody knows?”

“Hmm.”  Springarm scrolled down the arrests. “Most of these happened here, around D55.613.”

“Right. Old beat. Someone would know him.”

“We hope.”  He gave an encouraging smile, boosted by another piece, another step in the path that would hopefully lead to an answer. “It’s a place to start.”

[***]

Optics flashed at them in the half-gloom, and disappeared, scurrying back into the shadows. Murmurs and whispers skirled around them s they rolled deeper into the gutters. Blue lights meant only one thing down here: Police. And everyone here, by nature of being here, was a criminal.

They stopped just before the grid coordinates, almost on signal, pushing up into their bipedal forms.  Their sleek polish and undented panels stood out from the dinged, smeared mechs, many of whom simply froze, as though hoping to be glossed over as part of the landscape.  They were here, together, both in their own ways mindful of Valve’s concern.

“Might as well get started,” Wheelarch said. He turned to a mech, a four-wheeler, small, one tire hanging limp and flaccid on a shoulder.  “Hey. Can I ask you a question?”

The four-wheeler recoiled against the wall, optics wide with fear. “Wh-what kind of question?”

Wheelarch shrugged one shoulder. “You’ve heard about the biwheels getting murdered, right?”

“Yeah…?”  The optics were still hesitant, focusing on Wheelarch’s hands, as though waiting for him to go for cuffs.

“We’re trying to stop the killer. Hey.” Wheelarch dropped his voice, the tone quiet almost soothing. “Being down here’s bad enough, right? Last thing you need is something like this on top.”

“I guess.”

Wheelarch pulled out his datapad, holding it out.  “You’ve seen Redlight around here recently?”

“Don’t know any Redlight,” the mech said, but his optics were glued to the pad, showing one of Redlight’s booking photos. 

Wheelarch shrugged, reaching forward, and forwarding the picture to a cropped one of Redlight, as victim, spread-eagled on the ground, in a dark puddle. “You sure? I’d really hate to have that happen to another mech.”

The grounder swallowed, nodding nervously. “D-don’t know nothing, though.” This time, an admission. He honestly didn’t know.

“Redlight?” A pair of orange optics, near the fourwheeler’s shoulder. “Is that…him?”

Wheelarch turned the pad to the new speaker. “Unfortunately.”  He grimaced. “No one should have to endure this. We really want to catch the mech who did this.”

“I don’t know anything,” the new mech said, stepping forward into Wheelarch’s dimmed lamps. 

“You knew Redlight,” Wheelarch prompted.

“Yes.”

Wheelarch gestured Springarm closer. “What do you remember, the last time you saw him.”

“The last time.”  The mech considered, frills along his arms rippling.  “It was a decacycle ago,” he said, distantly. “Hard to remember back that far.”

“Can you try?” Wheelarch shifted, holding the picture out again.  So that the mech’s gaze caught it again, so he couldn’t look away. 

“Yeah. I mean.” A sort of sheepish expression, the kind they’d already gotten used to from hardcore Sykheads. “Really hard to remember.”

Wheelarch shot a glance back at his twin, hard to read. Springarm stepped forward.  “We’re not interested in anything else, right now. Just catching the mech who did this.”  Up close, he could feel the tension from Wheelarch’s frame.  He was probably just as tense: they were outnumbered, here in the gutters, outnumbered and only in thin contact with the surface.

“Fool if you believe that,” the first mech muttered.  “Law. They lie all the time. Self-incrimination. Entrapment.”

“That’s not a lie,” the other mech said, pointing at the datapad.  “That’s Redlight. Or was.”  The mech turned back, mis-illumined orange optics set. “Maybe you don’t care, but I’m a biwheel.  That sick frag could come after me.”

Wheelarch nodded. “We need to catch him. Anything you remember, no matter how small, will help.”

The mech nodded, frowning, optics sliding back to the picture.  It was, Springarm thought, perhaps cruel to keep showing it, but it was working.  They were getting help.

“He was down with us. Not here,” the mech said. “Another place. Non-working, you know?”

Springarm nodded. Sure. They weren’t selling themselves.  He didn’t care if they were.  He wanted to catch a killer.  The debate about prostitution being a victimless crime could go on over all their heads, in Senators’ chambers. But death, they could all agree on.

“Anyway, he got a ping. Not a comm but a message alert.”

“Message. You do that a lot?”

The biwheel shook his head. “Me? No.” He edged closer, and into the oval of Wheelarch’s headlamps thrust a forearm: crushed, rusted, two fingers stripped down the exposed servos.  “Only the pretty ones do clients like that.” A wan grin. “I get the random leftovers. And the fetishists.” There was something ineffably sad in his smile and Springarm wanted to comfort him. And Drift. And everyone. No, Springarm. You can’t help everyone.  You can’t even help yourself right now. 

“Do you know what boards he used? Which ones are popular?”

A sheepish shrug.  “Don’t know.”

“Lightwave-9.” The first mech cut in, ducking his head away.  Wheelarch twitched, startled, fumbling with the datapad as the mech spoke. “It’s one a lot of us—them—use.”

“Are you sure he used it?”

The mech shook his head. “Not that night, no. But all the pageview mechs have an account there. Might use the same username on another site.”

Springarm nodded. “It’s a place to start.  Thanks.” 

The mech shifted, uncomfortably. “Yeah. Well.  Didn’t hear anything from me.”

Wheelarch tilted his head, but Springarm pulled him away, hooking his hand in the elbow. 

//What was that about?//

Springarm shrugged. //Might be a penalty for helping out the law. No matter how good the cause.//

A grunt. //You’re probably right.// He turned back, his brow furrowing. “You know,” he said, pitching his voice loud, so it could be overheard. “We’re not stupid. We know you’re holding out. No identification. You’re lucky we don’t drag you down to the station and settle this that way.” He tipped his chin down, glowering, and Springarm was surprised by the menace. 

A beat, and the others nodded, falling into their roles, raising their voices. “Not afraid of you,” the biwheel snarled.  “Trying to bully us, huh?”

Springarm  tugging on Wheelarch’s arm, perplexed, but feeling the atmosphere thicken around them. “Come on.” He shook his head as Wheelarch stepped away from the other mechs, wondering at the farce they had to pull. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to play into this idea of antagonism between the Police and the gutters.  He thought of Drift, again, hostile, wounded. 

“You’re right,” Wheelarch said. “We’re just wasting our time here.” 

Springarm’s mouth opened, but Wheelarch took the lead, rolling off in a blaze of his powerful motor, and Springarm had no choice but to follow.  //What?//

//Sorry,// Wheelarch said. //Good idea to get out of there.//

//They were helping.//

//And they could pay the price for it.  Not everyone trusts us or our motives.//

//But….// He cut himself short, thinking of Drift.  What it took for the trust, and if Drift feared reprisal.  He sighed, the sound a burst of exhaust.  Wheelarch was right.  He was so lucky to have him.


	12. Chapter 12

“Lightwave-9.”  Springarm frowned at the Rodion Police Computer CentralAI. 

“No results found.”  RPCC said, blandly.

Had it been deleted?  “Board archives search, last decacycle.”

“Not found.” 

“Query, general: Lightwave.”

“Historical archives: six results.  Astrophysics archives: 1,470,622,513 results. Geographical listings: twelve results.”  The long pause, waiting for the next command. Nothing on messageboards. Not even one through eight.  He tapped his hands on the console’s edge, confounded.  Did the two mechs lie to them?  No. He couldn’t believe that.  Not the way they’d acted. It didn’t make sense; they hadn’t been in a situation where they were forced to say anything to get rid of them.  But still. No results found.  Any way he asked it. 

“Geographical,” he said, finally. Might as well take a look.

The results pulled up were a few documents referring to a bar in the upper reach of the Dead End.  Huh.  Worth checking out.  Maybe they did leave messages the old-fashioned way. 

He stood up, closing the query, offhandedly thanking RPCC , even though he knew the AI had no real sentience.  An old habit, ingrained and hard to break. 

A ping on his public channel.  He clicked over. //Springarm.//

//Me. Drift.  Have some information.// Even over comm he could hear in the clipped syllables the suspicion and hardness. 

//Information.//

A pause. //Not going to tell you over a comm channel.// An ultimatum in a sense, or a mech grasping after some power, some control.

//All right.  Are you willing to meet?//

//Yeah.// As if the syllable itself was enough of an admission. 

Springarm looked at the fading screen of the RPCC. //Know where the Lightwave is?//

Another pause—thinking? Or thinking how much it would reveal if he answered?  //Know where it is.//  Neutral, admitting as little as possible.

//There, in about a half a cycle?//

//Fine.// And then the sharp click of the comm cutting, almost hasty. Well, it was something. And this way Springarm could follow the lead he already had, even if Drift had nothing useful.  But he didn’t think the gutter mech would contact him unless he had something important. He turned to the exit.

“Heading out?”  Wheelarch caught up to him. 

Springarm gave a distracted nod. “Lead on the message board. Maybe.”

“Want company?” 

Springarm thought of Drift, the mech’s feral wariness. “No. I can handle this.”

Wheelarch looked hurt. “You sure?” He was on the verge of referencing Valve, his admonition to be careful.

Springarm gave a hasty nod as he stepped through the door and into the warm gilding light of the afternoon. “Yes, and this might all be nothing anyway.  There are other things you should concentrate on.” He shrugged. “Perfectly safe. Promise.”

“All right,” Wheelarch said, uncertainly, standing in the doorway, as though unable to cross.  “If you’re sure you don’t want me to come.”

“It’s not a matter of not wanting you,” Springarm said, and relaxed at the smile that answered. “Just that I can handle this. Really.”

The smile remained. “All right. But if you get into any trouble….” He tilted his head, chiding.

“You’ll be the first I’ll call. I promise.”  Springarm grinned.  Wheelarch’s protectiveness was touching: they were all they had here, in Rodion.   It was almost a sign, he thought. This killer was bringing them closer, strengthening their friendship.  In a sick way, he thought, this case was helping them heal from Nyon.

He gave a quick wave over his shoulder before flipping to his bike mode, and heading down.   





	13. Chapter 13

Drift was leaning against the grey plascrete wall under the flickering neon sign that glumly spelled out Lightwave, when Springarm arrived.  He didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge Springarm’s arrival until he’d looked down and up the road around them. He elbowed himself off the wall. “Why’d you want to meet here?”

Looking at the place, Springarm wondered that himself.  “Is it even open?” The windows were either blacked out or so heavily grimed inside as to be opaque.

“Yeah. It’s open.” Drift headed to the door, spreading one palm under the sensor. The door opened, and a rush of fetid air hit Springarm like a wave. “Police,” Drift said, loudly. “With me.”  Drift didn’t move, and Springarm heard a flurry of noise in the darkness. He shifted closer, curious.  “Stay back,” Drift said, quietly, one brassy swell of his cheek armor over the shoulder. “Part of the rules.”

“Rules.”

A nod. “Explain once we’re inside.”  A scan of the room and Drift stepped forward.  Springarm followed, trailing behind him, catching the curious, studying flashes of colored optics around him.  Drift led him to a small booth, in a back corner, gesturing that he take the seat with his back facing the room. He settled down on the seat, somehow glad for the high back of the booth behind him.  Drift flopped across from him on the cracked vinyl. 

“What--?”

“Don’t ever come here alone,” Drift said, abruptly, almost angry. “Not safe for your kind.”

“Neither’s the gutters.”

The mouth pinched. “This place—this kind of place—different.  Truces here. No fighting, stealing. No bad business.  Havens.”  He let his optics travel in an ironic circuit of the room.  It was grimy—filthy, really—reeking of unwashed mechs, poor maintenance, and mildew. 

“Havens.” Just…without the police. Strange.

“You don’t think we need them?” A tinge of black hostility to the words.

“No, I do.”  

He twitched back as a mech, one panel bubbled with rust, slammed down two dirty glasses of sludgy energon. He reached for his chit. Drift cut him short with a sharp frown. He froze, until the rusted mech ambled away.




“Don’t do that here.”

“So…how does it work?” 

“If you have anything you leave it in the crate on the way out.” Drift gestured behind him. “Some mechs leave scavenged parts, half-vials of anticorrosive. Whatever you can spare, whatever you might want to get rid of before you’re caught with it.” A wry smile.  “The management works the rest of it out.” 

Springarm risked a glance to one side, away from the window. It would work, he supposed.  Keep the place lit, keep some kind of energon moving. And the truce.  It seemed unreal. He’d always believed that the gutters mechs were lawless. Yet here, they’d come up with a system of almost perfect, if smudged, charity. He took a sip of the energon: it was sludgy and sour. But he figured it would be some insult to refuse to drink it. 

He thought of Drift’s greed from before, when they’d met at the up-level café, and back to this. Like an echo of that meeting, only in Drift’s world.

Drift watched him, his own fingers curling around the cube, one idly rubbing at a roughened spot.  “Why’d you want to come here?”

“Message boards?  We heard that one of the victims used Lightwave 9.  There’s…no record of it.”

Drift smirked.  “Lot you don’t have records of.”

“I’m trying, Drift.” He could feel the earnestness scratch his throat, already roughened from the cheap energon.

“Yeah.” Drift looked away. “I know.”  He stared at the filth streaked window for a long moment, and then jerked his chin, reached to a panel on his left arm and jerking out a small connector cable, holding it out.

“What?”

“Take it,” Drift said. His optics narrowed. “I’m clean.”

“It—it’s not that!”  Springarm clutched at the connector cable, fumbling to open his own panel.  He slipped the cable into the socket, curious, and answered a quick Y to an access query, feeling a firewall open between them. He felt tense and tight and nervous, like before an arrest, uncertain, hoping he was ready for anything. 

An orange text popped on his HUD. 

net.access.port.login:

As he watched, the letters appeared:  rednet.lightwave.9.drift.

A moment, far longer than the RPCC would take, with only a blinking orange cursor. And then, You have 4 messages. One urgent. Active boards: 6.

Springarm blinked, looking through the message at Drift. The mech cocked his head. “Your cybernet systems don’t register these nets anymore. Archaic. Outdated.” There was bitter irony in the terms. 

“How do I find someone?”  Springarm was on the edge of his bench, intent, vision split between Drift and the messages blinking in his HUD.

“Want them to know or not?”

“Not.”  Redlight was dead, there was no point. But maybe someone was monitoring the account. 

query(dark).user=   The cursor blinked, waiting, and it took a moment to realize Drift was waiting for Springarm to fill it out. He fumbled—he never was very good at shared control—adding slowly ‘Redlight’.

The query came up immediately.  Recognized.  “Is there a way to access his messages?”

“Victim?” Drift guessed. Springarm nodded.

Drift hesitated, his mouth pulling into a deeper frown.  “Only because he’s dead,” Drift muttered, and ran a series of commands, too fast for Springarm to follow, deliberately keeping his secrets.  And then:

Inbox:  message:  three read, one unread.  Springarm checked the timestamps on the messages. That one would have been sent after death, the unread one, so whoever it was…didn’t know. He felt like a graverobber, feeling Drift’s cool red gaze upon him as he opened the messages. He pressed on, opening the read messages.  One was apparently another gutter mech thanking him for some talk they’d had. It struck him it might have been code, but the next message was blunt enough, making an appointment, requesting explicit sexual acts. The tone was businesslike, almost cold, and when Springarm looked to the sender, all that came up was a number.

“Guest code,” Drift said.  “May be a fake. I’m not good enough to tell.”

Springarm nodded.  There was a way to crack it. He’d find a way.  But first the third message. ‘ I need to meet you. ‘

A time and a set of coordinates.  Their optics met.  It was the same day, a half-cycle before the murder. It had to be.

Another number chain, instead of a name.  “How do we trace this.”

“Told you I don’t know,” Drift said, irritated. “But.” He sent another quick command, and a string of numbers popped up. “Copy that.  Transmission trace.” He gave a shrug. “Best I can do.”

Springarm smiled. “Better than I could do. Thank you, Drift.”

The mech squirmed under the praise, grunting, and then shutting down the feed. “Anytime,” he muttered, gulping a fast swallow of his energon. He didn’t seem to notice the taste, or the clumpiness. Then again, Springarm thought, this was probably what he was accustomed to drinking. 

“You wanted to talk to me, though,” he said, abruptly. 

Drift nodded. “Heard something. A near miss, decacycles ago. Biwheel.”

“You know his name?”

“Gearslip.” A shrug.  “He won’t talk to you, though.” 

“Why not?” Springarm gave a frustrated  huff. “Don’t they realize we’re trying to help?”

Drift snorted, as though the answer should be obvious, before leaning forward.  He pinned Springarm’s gaze with his own, his voice soft but inexorable. “Gearslip said his attacker was Police.”

“Police? Impossi—“ he cut himself off, even before the red optics before him blazed. No, it was possible. He was just blind to it.  But trying, desperately, not to be.  “Police,” he repeated. 

Drift gave a hard nod.

“I’m sorry,” Springarm said. “It’s just…I don’t want to accept it.”

Drift shrugged. “Hard for you to believe. Not hard for us.” Springarm thought back to the first time he’d met the mech, in the interview room, what the mech had said then, implied about other officers. He’d pushed it aside, but here it was, rearing its head again.

“Still.” He didn’t want to believe. But more than that, if he was expected to believe it, he wanted something more than Drift’s word. “How did he know?”

Drift leaned forward, tapping the brassard bolted to Springarm’s armor. “One of those.  Sure.  Suppose a mech could impersonate one. Can get everything on the black market.  But in the gutters…that’d be a stupid  fraggin’ disguise.”

That made sense. Too much sense.  He frowned, unhappy. Really unhappy. “Did he say anything else?” Springarm whispered, not sure he wanted the answer. A thought struck him, sludgier and more sour than the energon: Whirl. 

Drift shook his head.  “Gearslip wouldn’t lie,” he said, quietly. “He wouldn’t make up anything he didn’t know for sure. He saw a brassard.”

“I believe you. And him.” 

Drift subsided back onto his battered seat.”Yeah.” His all-purpose term, it seemed. 

“And thank you. For,” he gestured around the place. “This.”

A bark of laughter that seemed to surprise even Drift.  “Not a lot to be thankful for here.” Drift seemed uncomfortable, not quite edgy, but not at ease.

“Should we leave?” Springarm offered.  Maybe that was it, this place. More precisely, Springarm’s presence in this place.

Drift nodded, pushing to his feet, digging into a storage compartment.  “Got enough,” he said, gesturing Springarm to follow, and dropping a rattling handful of something into the bin at the door.  Springarm barely restrained the curiosity to peer over the edge.

The street around them was quiet, a murmur of movement, mechs moving on wrapped in their own business, and hoping for the courtesy of indifference.  “I can pay you back,” Springarm said. He hadn’t seen a chit reader in the whole place, and it wouldn’t surprise him to find out there wasn’t one.  But he had nothing else to offer. Maybe Drift would lead him to a chitreader.

Drift turned, abruptly, as they left the grimy windows behind, and Springarm found himself pushed back against the warm stone of the wall, and Drift’s mouth was on his, shy and insistent in turns.  It stunned him, and for a moment he was still, startled, not knowing what or why or where this had come from, before pushing those aside, wanting only this.  His mouth opened under the kiss, the sour energon somehow turned sweet, Drift’s glossa shy and knowing, the mech’s hands hovering over his shoulders, as though afraid to touch.

Springarm wasn’t, and his hands curled over the dark chassis, his spinal struts arching off the wall, bumping his chassis against the guttermech’s.  Drift growled, and Springarm could feel arousal flaring over him.  And his own desire matching that.

No, he thought.  A suspect or at least an informant.  It was illegal. Or unethical. Or contaminating evidence. Or…

He didn’t care. The case had him so worn, so stressed, that the touch, the kiss, the reminder he was something more than a crime-solving machine, that he had thoughts and  feelings and desires and value beyond his job, shattered his self-control.

He managed to tear himself from the kiss, fingers sliding along the backstruts, feeling the grime beneath their sensor tips and not caring.  “Do you have a place?”

A growl, the mouth dipping to his throat, the hands reaching for the drivetire, squeezing at its rubber. “No place you should be,” Drift whispered.

“A room. I’ll pay. Please.” Need roughened his voice.

Drift’s vents were harsh, ragged against him, stirring the warm, dank air of the district.  The red optics sought his, lenses spiraled wide with want, overcoming his own resistance. “Yes.” 


	14. Chapter 14

Wheelarch was waiting up when he got home, cycles later.  Springarm had rolled home, his systems throbbing with pleasure and memory. Drift had taken him to a small hostel, a sad, beaten-down looking place, and Springarm had regretted that something like desire should have to take place in such seedy, grimy surroundings. Drift had stepped through into the maintenance facility, acutely aware of his own condition, running the taps hot and long, stepping in to let the cleanser sheet over his body, trying to ignore the grey-brown puddling at his feet. 

It hadn’t bothered Springarm—he’d stepped in, the warm cleanser pelting over them both, hands greedy over the other’s frame, mouth tasting of cleanser and sour energon and they were somehow the most arousing tastes in the world as Drift’s mouth joined his.  It had been fast, and wordless, their hands and bodies groping and straining against each other, hands fumbling for connector cables—the heavier ones, this time, both hands closing over the cables between them, squeezing them joined.  And they’d both trembled in ecstasy, energy bouncing between them, creating waves of resonance, sound and sensation that swept over them both, leaving them shuddering with bliss under the harsh light of the cheap room. 

It was then it really hit Springarm, what he was doing.  Not just contaminating a witness, endangering his career—already.  But what it was to Drift—another time being used, another time reduced to a thing, useful only in limited ways. And Springarm knew that wasn’t what he meant, or felt, but he knew how easily it could look that way. 

Did he want a relationship with Drift? He didn’t know.  He didn’t know if it was fair, or right, much less if he could sustain it. Drift would always be a gutter mech, always wary and resentful. And though that was part of why Springarm wanted him, he knew that those very things spoke against anything lasting between them.

And he’d looked in the red optics, and knew Drift knew the same. But Drift was wiser, in his way, and didn’t let the future mar the present.  Drift had sent one last pulse, slow and languorous, over the cable link between them, pulling Springarm down into a gentle kiss that traveled from his mouth to his crest.  “You should go,” Drift had murmured, releasing him.  And Springarm had bowed his head, nodded, and stood up, cleanser streaking off him as he left, a trail of wet footprints on the plascrete floor.

And now, Wheelarch, sitting on the couch in the front room, holding a datapad in a lax, offhand way that told Springarm that his twin had not been reading it, the room’s sole light a soft, golden glow, and so different from the  harsh, high-key washout of the hostel.

“I’m guessing you didn’t get in trouble,” Wheelarch said, blandly.

Springarm nodded, feeling a sudden, electric surge of guilt. “No.  I’m…sorry I didn’t comm to update you.” 

“I was worried.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I got…I was tracking down that lead.”

Wheelarch’s mouth moved as though pressing a grape of anger between them. “And what did you find out?”

“I have a possible way to track down whoever contacted Redlight last.”

“Do you?” A thrum of tension, excitement, Wheelarch’s fingers tightening on the datapad.

Springarm gave a shrug. “Well, it needs work. I need to run a scantrace. But I have all the relays.”

Another twitch of the mouth, the gold light of the room cutting it into a warm shadow. “That’s good work.  How’d you manage that?”

A flutter in Springarm’s spark. “My informant.”

“Informant.” He tapped the pad against his leg, agitated. Well, he had been left out  of the loop, Springarm thought. Uninentionally. Until tonight. And suddenly the last few cycles seemed steeped with shame.

“The one that they snagged the first day for questioning.  Drift.”

“You’ve turned him into an informant. Springarm.” Wheelarch frowned, admonishing.  “He could be a suspect.” 

“He’s not.  He was with me when we got the call about the one you interviewed.”

“Which might have been a copycat.  Our perp doesn’t let them get away.”

Springarm wavered.  “A slag of a coincidence, then.”

“One that it seems he took full advantage of.  How do you know this data he gave you is any good?” An aggressive tilt of the head, light glossing like fire over his red helm.

Springarm blinked, cycling a vent.  Wheelarch seemed unaccountably angry.  Or maybe he was just imagining it, projecting his own sudden guilt, trying to give it a source outside himself. “It’s a lead,” he said, quietly. “Maybe it’ll be something, maybe nothing.  But we have to follow it.”

“He’s wasting our time. I know that type, Springarm. You do, too.  They have a grudge against the police.  You know that.” Wheelarch shook his head, laying the pad aside, rising to his feet, arms outstretched. “I just don’t want you to lose perspective, Springarm. I know we want to solve this, but we can’t just…grab at everything and lose our focus.”

Wheelarch was right. And he knew, and he knew he’d lost perspective, badly. Could feel it burning through his circuits, even as he leaned forward, reaching into his twin’s embrace. “Why would he give me false information, though?”

Wheelarch stiffened, and Springarm heard the sharp click of an olfactory sensor. And was aware, suddenly, of the fact that he smelled—strongly—of the industrial cleanser, and below that, the tang of ionization from the overload.  Wheelarch pushed him away, his optics hooded and dark. “You tell me.”

Three words: a slap in the face, a rejection, an indictment. And Springarm had no response.


	15. Chapter 15

It’ll be better in the morning, Springarm thought. Wheelarch will have calmed down, and Springarm knew he’d calmed down, though the weight of what he’d done with Drift sat in his belly like a stone. But it had settled, and he’d think—later—how to talk to Drift about it. He would. He promised himself.  And the other mech deserved that much decency, that much respect. 

But Wheelarch was his twin, his best friend.  They’d been through everything together: the academy, the slander, and the transfer.  And everything Wheelarch said last night had been right. Everything.  He was too soft, too emotional and it was blinding him. 

He’d start with an apology. He’d start by telling Wheelarch he was right and Springarm had been wrong. He’d ask for help.  He knew Wheelarch would help him, cover for his transgression. He knew he would.  He had faith in Wheelarch, and if Wheelarch was angry at him, it was because he’d damaged the other’s faith in him.

He’d earn it back. No matter what.

“Wheelarch?”

There was no answer and their apartment, as small as it was, seemed to yawn around him.  Had Wheelarch left?  He rushed to the other’s room, coding the door, feeling like a thief.  No, he said. Only step inside the threshold, that’s all.  Just to see.

Wheelarch wasn’t in his room, but everything else was. Springarm felt a sudden release of tension, and he didn’t realize till that moment that he was afraid that the other might have left him entirely.

No. Have faith. He will be back.

He padded to the front room: the datapad still lay on the table, discarded, at a nervous angle.  He picked it up, simply because it was the last thing Wheelarch had touched. He flicked it on, optics blankly scanning the pages: an article on message traces.  A fond, unstable smile.

How like Wheelarch to be looking up   what he knew Springarm would need. They were such a good team.  And this pad, left here: it was a message, though quiet: he was still working the case, he still valued Springarm’s lead.




And Springarm had misstepped. 

He steeled himself, hitting his comm. //Wheelarch?//

A long hesitation before he heard the acknowledging click. //Busy.//

Springarm recoiled at the brusque tone.  But no, he deserved the coldness. //I think…I want to talk.//

//Later.//

That was…something. //Where are you?//

Another  hesitation, then, //Following a lead.// And Springarm heard the mocking hard echo of his own words.  He cut the comm, burning with shame.

[***]

What do you do, though? What do you do when you feel  you’ve lost your world’s foundation, and through your own weakness?  Springarm…went to work.  It was rote, mechanical, an attempt to crowd out the foaming roar of recrimination with duty.  He sat at the console, drivetrain tire drooping over the edge, calling up all the information they had: known victims, and any other victims that may have been unnoticed, earlier kills.  He didn’t expect to find anything, but he had to look at the pieces, stir them around busily, make shapes and try to make patterns.

He called up the pictures of the victims, hoping to steel himself against his own self hatred with a larger disgust, forcing himself to study the pictures, scour the reports.  Model, armor color, registry number, optic color, helm type, a list of variables that added up to individuality. What made them victims? What made them deserve to die in this killer’s mind, beyond the biwheel frame?  Color?  No.  Helm type? No.  Optic color?  Red. Red.  Red.  Orange.  All the colors he’d seen in the gutters, the night-vision low frequency optics. 

Something niggled at his memory.  The interview, the one Wheelarch had done. Red, he’d said. Red.  Red optics?  Why would a gutter mech notice another mech having what were perfectly normal optics for down there? Not red optics…then….armor.

‘Gearslip said his attacker was Police.’  Red armor.  Armor, not optics.

No. Oh, no.

No. Impossible. He felt a stir of anger at himself. How dare he even think…?  




The scantrace. That would prove it.  He’d run a trace on the suspicious message and he’d know, for sure, that it wasn’t…he couldn’t even bring himself to think it. 

…Wheelarch.

“Scantrace protocols, low amplitude relays.” He could hear the quiver in his voice, grateful that the RPCC had no emotional protocols, needing just information.

“Acknowledged.”

He rattled off the entire string, adding. “Origination.”

Another clicking acknowledgement. “Public terminal.”  Well, that was a bit of a let-down. By definition they were anonymous.

“Location.”  He felt a wash of nausea: he’d counted on this to clear Wheelarch. 

RPCC rattled off a ten-digit grid.

And three long kliks, Springarm staring at the coordinates, wondering why they sounded so familiar.

They were right by their small apartment.  The last time he’d seen them, they were blinking in the upper left, over the top of Valve’s crest.

He clung to the front of the console, hands digging in like claws, feeling as though the world behind him was being slammed to the side, dissolving into chaos. The only thing that had focus was that ten digit string, damning as near as it could be.  He couldn’t even think the word ‘no.’

//Springarm!//  The comm cut through, volume boosted loud, but crackly, funneled through bad relays. He knew the relaysquelch—from the gutters. He knew the voice, too. Drift. 

//Drift.  Where…?//  He heard the bad relays eat his reply, returning it to Drift as so much garble. 

Another burst, and he realized the gutter mech was using every trick he had to boost the signal, as he rattled off another series of coordinates, the alphanumerics of the gutters, repeating it three times before the signal went dead.

Springarm bolted, knowing he didn’t want to know what he’d find at the end of that digit string, but knowing he had to go.

[***]

Something—chance, or luck, or some mute understanding of the frantic fear that seemed to swirl around Springarm like a solar wind—kept anyone from stopping his downward progress, his tires screeching around turns, engine roaring hot and loud, pushing every bit of acceleration and maneuverability from his alt that he could. He focused on driving, on keeping himself upright, moving forward, avoiding obstacles, trying not to think beyond his headlamps, cutting more and more sharply into the gathering darkness, trying not to think more than what the road a klik ahead held for him.

Until it held…everything.

He braked hard, shifting to his root mode still shedding acceleration, footplates striking sparks in the darkness as he rounded the last barrier, and saw what he knew in his mind’s eye he was going to see: Wheelarch, crouching like a predator over the prone, energon-smeared body of Drift.

Too late. It’s too late. Dear Primus, dear holy Matrix, please may it not be too late.

Wheelarch saw him, optics caught by the shower of sparks. “Springarm. You see? He attacked me.” 

Springarm shook his head, feeling his spark seem to roil in horror.  “He didn’t, Wheelarch.”  Already, he could see the telltale marks—the ferocious stabs, the dents along the chassis housing.  They were the same.  Drift had no tires, but the hover baffles were shredded. And energon, a thick, dark pool in the dim, sweeping light of their headlamps. It was sickeningly the same. Even Springarm could tell.  “He didn’t attack you.” 

“He did!” Wheelarch reached for him, one energon-sticky hand hard on his elbow. “Springarm, I was just defending myself.” 

Springarm shook his head, forcing the words, at a croak, out of his vocalizer.  “No.  How did you get here, Wheelarch? How did he find you?”  He didn’t want to hear the lie, so he continued, the words, once begun, pouring out of him. “You knew who he was, from my reports. You knew the channel. You sent a message. Pretending to be me.  Wanting to talk about…something.”

“…last night,” Drift croaked, shifting feebly on the floor. “Wanted to talk about last night.”

Of course. And Drift wouldn’t refuse.  Not even if it was to hear the worst.  Springarm felt his face tighten, torn between anger and sobbing.  He forced himself to look up, to meet Wheelarch’s gaze, somehow sickened by what he found there: no fear, only a predator’s caginess, already working on extricating himself from this new trap. 

“Springarm,” Wheelarch said, his voice strangely calm.  “You don’t understand.” His hand tightened on Springarm’s elbow, pulling him closer.  “He’s a gutter mech.  He was ruining you.  Ruining the investigation.”

“So you…were going to kill him?”  Springarm shook the excuse off, feeling a dull stir of anger.  “If there’s someone to get angry at for ruining the investigation…?” he tapped his own chassis. “Me. I’m the one you should be mad at.”

Wheelarch shook his head, almost frantic. “No. Not you. I can’t get angry at you, Springarm.”  His mouth moved, earnest and quivering, shaping words he barely dared to voice. “I love you.” 

The words were small but echoed like a bomb-burst between them, Springarm rocking back on his heels. He tried to speak, to say…something, anything, but no words came, as though the inside of his helm had been scoured clean. 

Wheelarch tugged him closer, encouraged somehow by his silence. “I love you,” he repeated. “All this time. I always have.  Back home, here.  Always.”  Emotion shimmered over his blue optics, as he tugged Springarm into a kiss, gentle and sweet, trembling and bittersweet.  “I hated them,” Wheelarch whispered, the words buzzing the air between their lipplates, as Springarm stood, numb and dumbfounded.  “Back home. I hated their rumors.  Hated their small-mindedness. Their judgments.  First about Valve, then about us. That we were tainted, because of him. And even when we were free of him? Even then…?” He shook his head with distaste.

“ Here, though, we had a new chance. A fresh start. And no one would have to know…anything.”  The mouth pulled into a tearful smile against his own, and Springarm saw, in a flash, the color and swirl of what Wheelarch wanted.

And knew that he’d never have been able to accept it. “Wheelarch.”

“I know,” Wheelarch murmured, soothing a hand over Springarm’s helm. “I know. They ruined it for you, made you too afraid, too aware.” He shook his head, a mirror of Springarm’s own gesture. “They don’t matter, Springarm. Only you do. Only you do.” Sweet words, a lover’s words, and from any other mouth, they would have been intoxicating and dizzying, setting his spark ablaze. 

But they were Wheelarch’s words, and they were cloying and sinister, staining the past, sticky with blood energon, every word, every fond touch between them.  Springarm shuddered, feeling suddenly filthy. Wheelarch pushed forward, bumping their chassis armor together, and Springarm felt the slide and release against him, Wheelarch retracting the armor, revealing the gleaming dodecahedron of his spark chamber.  His optics burned, lambent and blue, in the darkness, before the space between them burst into flame-colored light.  Springarm tried to twist away, feeling the pull of the spark at his own armor, helpless to resist. “No,” he said, weakly. “Please.”

“It’s all right,” Wheelarch said, tipping in for a kiss. “I’ll be strong for you now. I always have.”  Valve’s trial. His severing. All of it: Wheelarch had stood, staunchly by him, supporting him, consoling him and…wanting him.

Springarm shuddered, his chassis plating retracting, despite his frantic overrides, and he felt, rather than saw, the bluegreen of his own spark burst open between them, their sparks’ light dancing and swirling together.  And he could see Wheelarch, feel him, and knew. 

Knew everything.  Every death, every murder, the grim satisfaction, the sated anger, the violence in each tireslash, the agonized rejection channeled into each stab at the spark chamber.  Every hunt, every chase a sort of grim lust, every death a release.  Even Raceslick in the medical facility, killed because he got too close to blurting the truth.  Raceslick—he saw the mech’s face, optics widening in recognition at just who stood before him, before spasming in death. 

It was too horrible—something beautiful twisted into something charred and evil and dark and…sick.  That was the worst of it: it was sick, sickness, a disease, a sweet thing gone corrupted, malignant. And Springarm heard himself weeping, hating that he hadn’t seen, hadn’t caught it in time. Maybe if he had, it wouldn’t have come to this.  “I’m sorry!” he heard himself cry out, a rejection, a self-recrimination, self-hate that he felt echoed in Wheelarch.  “I…I’m sorry.” 

Wheelarch stumbled back, suddenly, their sparks tearing apart, light like tendrils tearing between them, and Springarm saw, in the flashflare of light, Drift, slithered forward on his ruined belly, flung against Wheelarch’s legs, pulling him down, away, in a a whine of overstressed servos and a scream of red light.

Springarm clamped a hand over his already-closing armor, shivering in the darkness, hating, fearing to move, because every word, every step he’d taken had been wrong.  Wheelarch reached to him for balance, hand grabbing for Springarm’s other wrist. He caught the other’s gaze, their sparks seeming to reach and flee each other, and for one last moment they were…one, bonded, body and spark, love and disease, sweetness and bitterness, anger and sorrow.

And then Wheelarch plunged Springarm’s hand into his spark, through the chamber, disrupting the vital, swirling core.

A scream of mechanics and agony, both their voices, both their bodies feeling the pain, and Wheelarch fell back, hollow and dead, and his haunted, adoring blue optics were the last thing Springarm saw.


	16. Chapter 16

Springarm felt energon tingle over his systems, tracing it slowly to his mouth.  No. He didn’t want it, didn’t want to return to the world of the living, didn’t want energon, didn’t want to see, to know. To know what others knew. It was hard enough holding it all  in cocooned to himself in darkness. He had no idea how it would stand the light of day, how he could possibly go on.

“Springarm,” a voice, distant and familiar, gentle, and a hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy. No rush.”  Sunflare.  Sunflare, from the department. That meant they must know.  Springarm spluttered a sob into the energon the other was holding, carefully, up to his mouth. “Hey. Easy. It’s okay,” Sunflare said.  “We got a description of the perps from the victim.  Drift.”

Springarm blinked. No, no description. The perp was right there, where Whirl and Orion Pax himself were crowded around the fallen body of Wheelarch. He wanted to look…and didn’t want to see.  “No.”

“Yeah. He told us everything. The bleeders.  Wheelarch trying to stop them. Got over his head and called you.”  A squeeze at his shoulder. “No consolation, but if Wheelarch had to go, at least he went a hero, right?”

“A hero.” The word tasted like ash. 

Whirl turned away from Wheelarch, his sole optic hard and angry. “Don’t worry, Springarm.  Cop killers. We won’t let them get away with it.” His very frame promised violence. 

Springarm nodded, hollowly, risking a glance over at Drift, one of the Emergency Techs kneeling busily over him, his body a mass of patch tape, and another mech from the department  asking questions, jotting down the answers.  It was some focus of the nearly dead, Springarm thought, that he could look at Drift and see what he’d done: He’d get some justice for his own wrongs, and let Wheelarch escape.  Something swirled within his spark, contaminant and red, pain and gratitude, that the mech who had nothing to his name but a battered datapad, had given them both a lie they could live with. 

The tech spoke softly to the officer, who retreated, closing down his pad. “Guess we have enough for now,” he said. 

Springarm struggled to his feet, moving woodenly to the emergency vehicle as they hefted Drift in.  “Full repairs,” he said, quietly. “Please. Fix…everything. Related to this assault or not.”  Fix everything. Maybe it would make a difference this time.  “For me. For Wheelarch.” His voice broke at the name, and Drift stirred, sitting up, one hand reaching, finding his.

“Sure thing.” The tech scanned him, the body, the trembling servos, then lingered on his face, the taut mask of grief. “Hey,” he offered, “You want to come with?”

He caught Drift’s red optics, laced with pain, and still able to hold a story together, still be able, in his pain, through his pain, to reach out, to care for something beyond himself.

“Yes,” Springarm said, letting himself be lifted into the vehicle next to Drift, not daring, not wanting to release the battered, stained hand.  The vehicle rolled forward, slowly, and Springarm couldn’t stop himself from looking out the open back, the wash of light from the police cordon, Wheelarch’s body, charred and red and gold, a beautiful ruin growing smaller and smaller, like a cinder dying out. He'd have to explain this to Valve. Somehow. He didn't have the strength for that now. But he didn't need to. Not right now. 

Drift’s hand tightened on his, a promise of an uncertain future, a hope, like  a rare ray of sunlight in the black of the gutters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well so, there you go. My first attempt at a mystery in years. 
> 
> I will honestly be surprised if anyone's actually read this far, a story involving characters so minor that people don't even recognize their names, more surprised if anyone was surprised by the killer's identity. 
> 
> Still, it was fun to try, and I enjoyed making up some of the worldbuilding, if nothing else.


End file.
